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Title: Report of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, and other commissioners, charged by the King of France, with the examination of the animal magnetism, as now practised at Paris
Author: France. Commissaires chargés par le roi de l'examen du magnétisme animal
Contributor: Benjamin Franklin
Release date: April 10, 2026 [eBook #78413]
Language: English
Original publication: London: J. Johnson, 1785
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78413
Credits: Tim Lindell, toy9683, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REPORT OF DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, AND OTHER COMMISSIONERS, CHARGED BY THE KING OF FRANCE, WITH THE EXAMINATION OF THE ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AS NOW PRACTISED AT PARIS ***
REPORT
OF
DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,
AND OTHER
COMMISSIONERS,
CHARGED BY THE
KING OF FRANCE,
WITH THE EXAMINATION OF THE
ANIMAL MAGNETISM,
AS NOW PRACTISED AT PARIS.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.
WITH AN
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, (NO. 72) ST. PAUL’S CHURCH-YARD. 1785.
INTRODUCTION.
The subject of the following pamphlet has excited the extremest
attention in France, has for years filled their Journals and Mercures,
and has employed some of their best pens and their brightest wits.
By some it has been applauded as the greatest of philosophical
discoveries, and by others decried as the juggle of an unprincipled
impostor. The English nation has too much curiosity for every thing
that occupies the neighbour kingdom, from whom we have long since been
used to receive the laws of politeness and etiquette, and who have
lately seemed to take the lead of us in philosophical discovery, for
the present translation not to prove an acceptable present to a large
and respectable class of our countrymen. It has been thought proper,
in order that the most uninformed reader may find in this little
compilation, every species of information upon the subject, to prefix
to it a brief account of the progress of this system.
M. Mesmer, the inventor of the animal magnetism, is a German physician.
The first thing by which he distinguished himself, appears to have
been the publication of a Dissertation upon the Influence of the Stars
on the Human Body, printed at Vienna 1766, and publicly defended by
him as a thesis in that university. In 1774 father Hehl, a German
philosopher, strongly recommended the use of the loadstone in the art
of medicine. M. Mesmer became very early a convert to the principles of
this writer, and actually carried them into practice with distinguished
success. In the midst however of his attention to the utility of the
loadstone, he was led to the adoption of a new set of principles,
which he conceived to be much more general in their application and
importance. In conformity to these principles he laid aside the use
of the loadstone, and proceeded with his cures in the method which he
afterwards published to the world. This apostacy involved him in a
quarrel with father Hehl and the celebrated Ingenhouz, by whom he had
formerly been patronized; and as their credit in Vienna was extremely
high, and their exertions against him indefatigable, his system almost
immediately sunk into general disrepute. To parry their opposition he
appealed in 1776 to the academy of sciences at Berlin. Here however
his principles were rejected as “destitute of foundation and unworthy
the smallest attention.” Undismayed by these important miscarriages,
he made a progress through several towns of Germany, still practising
the methods of the animal magnetism, and from time to time publishing
an account of the cures he effected, which did not fail to be followed
by a detection from his enemies. In the mean time, resolved, as it
should seem, if possible not to deprive his country of the benefits of
so valuable a discovery, he returned a second time to Vienna, and made
another essay with no greater success than the former.
Decided in his conduit by these uninterrupted defeats, he left Germany
and arrived at Paris in the beginning of the year 1778. Here one of
the first connexions he formed was with M. A. J. S. D., author of the
Dictionnaire des Merveilles de la Nature, from which work many of the
following particulars are extracted. It is observed by this Writer,
that “in spite of the apparent cautiousness and reserve of M. Mesmer,
and even in spite of the little success of his first experiments,
he could not refuse him credit for sincerity in his conduct, and
solidity in his reasonings; and he was convinced, that the failure
did not originate in the fault of his agent, but the indisposition of
the subjects upon which it was employed.” In April 1778, M. Mesmer
retired to Creteil with the patients he had collected, and in a few
months almost all of them returned to Paris perfectly restored. One of
them in particular was a paralytic, deprived of the use of her limbs,
and who now walked with all the ease and firmness in the world. In
November M. A. J. S. D. introduced M. Mesmer to the house of a family
of distinction, and who were actuated with the extremest curiosity
respecting all discoveries which had the benefit of humanity for their
object. Here he made an experiment so remarkable that it is necessary
to extract it somewhat at length.
“There being a pretty numerous company in the saloon, M. Mesmer touched
successively several persons, some of whom had nerves extremely
irritable, without producing any effect sufficiently considerable to
deserve to be ascribed to the animal magnetism. The operation was
repeated; the success was the same.
“The governor of the children of the family, a man of a very robust
and muscular constitution, little inclined to credulity, and fortified
in his scepticism by what he had just seen, had complained for some
time of a pain in his shoulders. As he was beyond dispute the least
susceptible person in the company, he proposed himself by way of
gasconade for the subject of a last experiment.
“M. Mesmer refused to touch this gentleman, but consented to direct
upon him the magnetism from a small distance. In compliance with the
doctor’s inclinations, the governor turned his back, and M. Mesmer,
seven or eight feet from his subject, presented his finger. This
continued for two minutes, the governor replying to the repeated
questions of the doctor with much humour and irony, M. Mesmer then
nodded his head significantly to the company, and in the mean time
guided his finger upwards, downwards, and a little circularly. The
patient said that he felt a kind of shuddering in the superior part of
the back; he however ascribed it to the action of the fire near which
he stood, and accordingly removed to another part of the room. The
experiment was resumed, the sensation augmented, and the patient said
he could compare it to nothing better, than a stream of boiling water,
circulating in the veins of his back and shoulders. The impression
became so strong that he refused to submit to the experiment any
longer. He was persuaded however; the master of the house held one of
his arms, and myself the other. In the process of the experiment the
heat became so insupportable, that he violently broke away from our
grasp. It was succeeded by a profuse perspiration in the part affected.
“M. Mesmer then placed the forefinger of each hand upon the chest
of the patient. The same sensation, but less violent, was produced
in this part; it ascended gradually to the face, and was succeeded
by a perspiration of the forehead. The patient then presented his
forefingers and thumbs, the rest of his hand being clenched; M. Mesmer
did the same very near to the patient, but without touching him. He
complained successively of a shuddering, itching and stiffness in the
palms of his hands; these were again succeeded by a local perspiration.”
To this remarkable experiment we will beg leave to add the following
from the Journal de Paris, No. 44, 1784.
“M. Mesmer being one day with messieurs Camp---- and d’E---- near the
great canal at Meudon, proposed to them to go alternately to the other
side of the canal, while he remained where he was. He then directed
them to thrust their cane into the water, in the mean time doing the
same himself. At this distance M. Camp---- was seized with a fit of
the asthma, and M. d’E---- with a pain in the liver to which he was
subject. Many persons have been unable to submit to this experiment
without fainting away.”
“One evening M. Mesmer walked with six persons in the gardens of the
prince de Soubise. He performed the magnetical operation upon a tree,
and a little time after three ladies of the company fainted away. The
duchess de C----, the only remaining lady, supported herself upon the
tree, without being able to quit it. The count de Mons----, unable to
stand, was obliged to throw himself upon a bench. The effects upon M.
Ang----, a gentleman of a very muscular frame, were more terrible. M.
Mesmer’s servant, who was summoned to remove the bodies, and who was
inured to these scenes, found himself unable to move. The whole company
were obliged to remain in this situation for a considerable time.”
These instances are cited by M. Thouret, Recherches & Doutes, p. 65.
M. Mesmer was from the first desirous of submitting his system to
the examination of the faculty of medicine; but he would not submit
to a regular and authentic committee appointed for that purpose,
apprehensive as he said of the baleful effects of the spirit of
society. This exception occasioned a misunderstanding between him and
the faculty, and the examination was never made.
In France the success of M. Mesmer was the reverse of what it had
been in Germany. His patients increased rapidly. His cures were
numerous and of the most astonishing nature. He was obliged to form
a number of pupils under his inspection to administer his process.
In 1779 he published a Memoir respecting the Discovery of the Animal
Magnetism, and promised a complete system upon the subject, which
should make as great a revolution in philosophy, as it had already
done in medicine. Struck with the clearness and accuracy of his
reasonings, the magnificence of his pretensions, and the extraordinary
and unquestionable cures he performed, some of the greatest physicians
and most enlightened philosophers of France became his converts.
Among these M. Court de Gebelin particularly distinguished himself, a
writer, who had attained the highest reputation by his researches into
antiquity, and who was, if possible, still more distinguished for the
elegance of his taste, the beauty of his conceptions and the richness
of his fancy. The house of M. Mesmer at Creteil was crowded with
patients. A numerous company was daily assembled at his house at Paris,
where the operation was publicly performed; and M. Deslon, one of his
pupils, is said to have cleared £100,000. He was patronised by people
of the first rank, and, as M. Thouret observes, the animal magnetism
became a mode, an affair of bon ton, an interest, extremely precious
and warmly espoused by the fashionable world.
In the mean time the new system was by no means destitute of enemies.
Some of the first pens in France were drawn to oppose it, and among
others that of M. Thouret, regent-physician of the faculty. The faculty
indeed had all along beheld its progress with the extremest jealousy.
At length it was thought to deserve the attention of government,
and a committee, partly physicians, and partly members of the royal
academy of sciences, with doctor Benjamin Franklin at their head, were
appointed to examine it. M. Mesmer refused to have any communication
with these gentlemen; but M. Deslon, the most considerable of his
pupils, consented to disclose to them his principles, and assist them
in their enquiries. Their Report forms the principal piece in the
ensuing pamphlet. M. Mesmer however has appealed from their decision to
the parliament of Paris.
In the mean time it can no longer be concealed that the system of
the animal magnetism is to be regarded as an imposture, and it may
therefore be asked, why it should be thought necessary to give to the
public a translation of papers, which may be thought interesting only
to persons who have been witnesses of the imposture. To this enquiry
several good answers may be given.
One at which we have already hinted is the universal attention it
has excited at Paris, where it seems to have divided the public
speculations with the celebrated and incomparable discovery of the
aerostatic globe. There are surely few people of a literary turn among
us, who will confess themselves void of curiosity respecting what
engages all the faculties of our neighbours, or who will not confess
that their literary pursuits are commonly at least as interesting and
instructive a subject of enquiry, as their politics.
Secondly, the Report of the commissioners and the enquiries respecting
the animal magnetism in general may be considered as relating not
merely to a temporary and unfounded hypothesis, but to the general and
most important question respecting the influence of the imagination
upon the animal frame, a question peculiarly interesting to the
metaphysician, and of the last consequence in medicine. Upon this
subject the Report seems to throw new light, and to have a tendency to
add precision and accuracy to our notions in regard to it.
But the argument upon which we would place the principal stress is the
essential importance of this fact in the history of the human mind.
Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is
more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is
uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require
so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of soul in order to
encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality,
but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it. In
this field the soul has room enough to expand herself, to display
all her boundless faculties, and all her beautiful and interesting
extravagancies and absurdities. It is observed of civil history, that
it is properly the record of human calamities; the same thing may be
observed of ecclesiastical history, it is the record of our errors.
For this reason a well written ecclesiastical history, a species of
composition that we suspect does not yet exist, would perhaps be the
most instructive study in the world.
But there is an additional reason, which gives the error of the
animal magnetism a particular claim to our attention. The same error
was started, if M. Thouret be in the right, two centuries ago. It is
therefore worth our curiosity to enquire, what different instruments
were necessary to deceive mankind in an ignorant and an enlightened
age, in the commencement of the seventeenth and the close of the
eighteenth century; in a word to run a parallel between the borrowed
system of Mesmer, and the original one of Paracelsus, Maxwel and sir
Kenelm Digby. And as every publication ought to be as complete as
possible within itself, we have destined to assist the reader in this
enquiry, the ensuing paper of the society of medicine respecting M.
Thouret’s performance.
P. S. The following extract of a letter from the best authority from
Paris, has been received while these papers are in the press. It
relates to the particulars of a fact alluded to at the bottom of page
xiv.
“Mesmer has complained to the parliament of the report of the
royal commissioners, and requested that they would appoint a
new commission, to examine--not his theory and practice, but--a
_plan_, which shall exhibit the only possible means of infallibly
demonstrating the existence and utility of his discovery. The
petition was printed: many thought the parliament would do nothing in
it. But they have laid hold of it to clinch Mesmer, and oblige him to
expose all directly; so that it must soon be seen whether there is
any difference between his method and Deslon’s.--I give you their
“Arret, of the 6 Sept. 1784.
“The parliament ordains that Mesmer _shall be obliged_ to expose,
before four doctors of the faculty of medicine, two surgeons and
two masters in pharmacy, the doctrine, which he professes to have
discovered, and the methods which he pretends must be adopted for the
application of his principles: they likewise ordain that a report of
his communications shall then be delivered to the attorney general,
to be laid before parliament for their sentence.”
REPORT
Of a Committee of the Royal Society of Medicine, appointed to
examine a Work, entitled, ENQUIRIES AND DOUBTS RESPECTING THE ANIMAL
MAGNETISM, BY M. THOURET, _Regent Physician of the Faculty of
Paris, and Member of the Society_. To which are subjoined, by the
Translator, Notes, chiefly extracted from M. Thouret’s Performance.
The underwritten were charged by the royal society of medicine, with
the examination of a work of M. Thouret, member of the society,
entitled, Enquiries and Doubts respecting the Animal Magnetism.
In the attentive perusal of this work, it is obvious to remark, that
it has two very distinct objects; one of them, which is in a manner
historical, is to explain the coincidences of the animal magnetism,
as it was known to the ancients, with that which is admitted by the
moderns: the other contains critical reflections and doubts in regard
to the evidences upon which the doctrine is founded, the uncertainty
of which M. Thouret undertakes to display. We will endeavour to lay
before the society an idea of his performance.
The animal magnetism held a principal rank among the systems, which
were embraced in that period of literary history, when suppositions
were admitted to hold the place of facts; and this hypothesis vanished,
together with many others, when experimental philosophy began to
dissipate the impostures of the imagination, and to afford an accurate
measure of the value of arts and sciences.
The object of this system was a fluid extremely subtle, upon which were
bestowed the magnificent titles of soul of the world, spirit of the
universe, and universal magnetic fluid; and which was pretended to be
diffused through the whole space occupied by the material creation, to
animate the system of nature, to penetrate all substances, and to be
the vehicle to animated bodies in general, and their several regions in
particular, of certain forces of attraction and repulsion, by means of
which they explained the phenomena of nature.
Nor were they contented to admit, or rather to imagine, the fluid we
have described; they flattered themselves that they were able, in
certain methods, to render themselves masters of this fluid, and to
direct its operations. Even this did not terminate their chimerical
pretensions: they affirmed that this fluid, in which they admitted a
species of flux and reflux, exerted an important degree of action upon
the nerves, and had a grand analogy with the vital principle; that its
effects, under the guidance of skill and illumination, extended to very
great distances, without the intervention of any foreign substances;
that it was possible to impregnate with it, either certain powders, in
the manner of sir Kenelm Digby, who asserted that he had done this, or
fluids, or different parts of the bodies of animals; that this agent
was like light reflected by mirrors, and that sound and music augmented
its intensity.
The partisans of the animal magnetism, who wrote in the seventeenth
century, did not yet confine their hopes within these limits: the art
of directing the fluid, which they had brought down from heaven, and
which, according to them, acted in so distinguished a manner upon
the human body, might be expected to have a considerable share in
the medical science, or rather to supersede that science, as it had
hitherto existed; they did not fail to assert, that in causing it to
circulate in a proper manner, the restoration of diseased organs was
infallible, as well the preservation of the health of those who were
yet unattacked with any disease[1].
Such was the origin of an external and universal medicine, of a species
entirely new, and which boasted of having the advantage of curing
diseases, without obliging any drugs to be swallowed by the diseased.
Soon after poles were discovered in the human body, that is, points,
towards which it appeared that the action of this imaginary fluid
ought to be directed, cures and evacuations were operated without the
assistance of pharmacy, sensations of various kinds were excited in the
patients; and notwithstanding the distinguished effects ascribed to
this agent, it was asserted, that persons the most feeble and delicate
might submit to its process without danger. The process had yet another
use, that of discovering the seat of the distemper; a thing frequently
so difficult to be ascertained, but which was pointed out by the fluid
by a sort of instinctive intelligence, and with absolute demonstration.
It perfected the concoction of the humours; nervous distempers
in particular, rarely resisted its influence; it was favourable
to transpiration. In fine, and this last remark is of particular
importance, it had a powerful action upon the moral principles of our
frame. A propensity, that could scarcely be resisted, was the basis of
the attachment and gratitude, which were vowed by the patients to those
who had employed upon them this method of cure. Several, and in this
number was Maxwel, even gave us to understand, that it was possible, in
certain circumstances of human life, to make an improper use of this
vehicle of influence[2].
This picture of the animal magnetism, as it was invented and applauded
by the ancients, is faithfully extracted from the performance of
M. Thouret. The principal authors, to which he has recourse in the
progress of his enquiry, are Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Goclenius,
Burgravius, Libavius, Wirdig, Maxwel, Santanelli, Tentzel, Kircher
and Borel[3]. The entire passages are extracted, and M. Thouret has
displayed in this performance, as he had already done in so many
others, an erudition, the most various, the most precise, and the most
extensive.
It is easy to see, how analogous is the system we have described
to that of M. Mesmer. To demonstrate this analogy, M. Thouret has
considered separately each of the propositions published and avowed
by the latter. They amount to twenty-seven, and the result of this
examination is, that they are all positively announced in some of the
authors whose names have been recited.
Every part of Mesmer’s system, even down to the experiments of the ring
and the sword, have been found by M. Thouret in the works of these
writers[4]. It is therefore certain, that the assertions of M. Mesmer,
which are represented by him as principles of his own, do not belong to
him; and that this theory, in the room of being an attractive novelty,
is an ancient system, abandoned by the learned near a century ago.
In ascending indeed to the original systems which were formed upon
the subject, we are unable to discover any thing but suppositions
destitute of proof, and for that reason devoted to oblivion. The parts
of this hypothesis were not connected together by any other tie, than
that of the imagination. The steps that were proposed in order to its
establishment, were the very same that had been employed in favour of
the art of cure, now by enchantments, and now by exorcisms. It has been
always by sensations that they have pretended to prove the existence
of these different agents; and if this kind of proof were sufficient,
there is not one of them which would not have been demonstrated. Sound
philosophy has therefore refused credit, as well to this species
of proof, as to the magnetism, such as it was proposed by Maxwel,
Goclenius and Santanelli, and such as we have described it in the
opening of this report.
Has the animal magnetism of M. Mesmer any better claim to our
confidence? M. Thouret, without replying to this question in a positive
manner, has permitted to himself, in the second part of his work,
certain reflections respecting it, which he has proposed simply as
doubts, and which relate entirely to what M. Mesmer has published, or
authentically advanced. It may be objected to him, says M. Thouret,
1. That the touch frequently employed in his method for a considerable
time, and on regions extremely sensible, such as those of the stomach,
is of itself capable of producing effects, by communicating a vivid
impulse to the nerves of the plexuses which are there situated, and
which have an intimate connection with the whole nervous system; that
authentic records present us with a great number of facts of this
kind, and that in consequence, the sensations, which originate in the
application of the touch, do not prove the existence of a separate
fluid or agent.
2. That the heat produced by the hand, and the motion communicated to
the air, may occasion very strong impressions upon a person extremely
sensible, and whose fibres are in a state of convulsion, without these
impressions being calculated to prove a new agent.
3. That in subduing the imagination by solemn preparations, by
extraordinary proceedings, by the confidence and enthusiasm inspired
by magnificent promises, it is possible to exalt the tone of sensible
and nervous fibres, and afterwards to direct, by the application of
the hands, their impulse towards certain organs, and to excite in them
evacuations or excretions, without there resulting any addition to the
sciences, either of philosophy or medicine.
4. That the partisans of the animal magnetism do not produce what
they call crises, that is, a state of convulsions, but in subjects
extremely irritable, extremely nervous, and above all, in women, whose
sensibility has been already excited by the means we have described.
5. That among these disposing causes, particular stress is to be laid
upon the presence of a person already in a state of convulsion, or
ready to fall into that state; that just as an organ attacked with
spasmodic affections, easily propagates these affections to the other
organs, in like manner are they transmitted from one man to another;
that we have therefore no reason to be surprised, if in the halls,
where the pretended magnetical operations are performed, spasms, and
even convulsions are diffused with extreme alacrity; and that history
furnishes a great number of facts, of convulsions propagated through
whole villages or towns, in a manner still more astonishing than that
of which the animal magnetism presents us with an example.
6. That history has also transmitted to us a great number of cures
operated by fear, by joy, or the commotion of any violent passion;
which proves beyond controversy, the power of nervous influences over
diseases.
7. That in different ages, two famous empirics, Valentine Greatrakes
of the kingdom of Ireland, and Gassner of Ratisbon, produced upon
different persons effects which appeared surprising, and have had
their admirers; that they employed only the instrumentality of the
touch, either upon the nape of the neck, or the limb affected; and that
it has been universally acknowledged, that they acted only upon the
imagination[5].
8. That in many instances, the partisans of the magnetism seem to
bestow a greater attention to excite surprise in the spectators, than
salutary effects in their patients; the spasms and convulsions which
they produce being the source of undoubted evil, were it only by the
habitude of that state which they are calculated to induce, while the
advantages of this method are not equally demonstrated.
9. That certain local diseases not being of the number of those upon
which the animal magnetism acts, and certain persons, by the confession
of M. Mesmer, not being susceptible of its action, it may be suspected,
that the partisans of this system have contrived for themselves this
resource, in order to account for their failure of success in certain
cases.
10. That to pretend to the discovery of a means which shall extend
to every kind of disease, that is, to an universal medicine, is an
illusion which cannot be excused in an enlightened age.
11. That the known effects of sensibility are sufficient to explain,
without any new agent, the phenomena which M. Mesmer produces by a
method which he has not yet imparted to the public.
12. That M. Mesmer, in supposing a particular agent, has adopted a rout
contrary to the interests of his discovery, in following the example of
those who have exerted their efforts to give credit to a system, worthy
upon every account of the oblivion into which it has fallen.
The society may judge of the performance from this extract: it is
proper here to call to mind, that the royal society, acquainted with
the zeal of M. Thouret, and his indefatigable enquiries into every
thing that concerned the magnetism, charged him in their session of
the twelfth of March 1784, with the collection from the authors, as
well ancient as modern, of all that had been written respecting the
animal magnetism. This collection, which is sufficiently complete to
satisfy every reasonable desire, and of which M. Thouret communicated
the plan to the society, composes the first part of his work, and is to
be considered as his report to the society upon that subject. We are of
opinion, that the society is extremely indebted to him in that respect.
The second part contains judicious reflections and sagacious doubts.
We think both of them worthy of being printed with the approbation and
privilege of the society.
The society, charged by the king with the examination of all new
inventions and secret methods of healing diseases, has not beheld
without inquietude, the species of vogue acquired by the animal
magnetism; whose procedures, whatever be their merit, have been and
are administered to the diseased, and paid for by the public, without
having previously, in obedience to the express provisions of the laws
of the kingdom, undergone the examination of the physical profession;
an abuse, against which the society, as in duty bound, has exclaimed
ever since its introduction. They have a right to take much pride
to themselves, that one of their members is publishing so learned
enquiries upon a subject, which has not been hitherto treated but in
anonymous compositions, which are, for the greater part, destined more
for the amusement than the instruction of their readers. The work of
M. Thouret, full of depth and sagacity, will enlighten those who are
impartial in their enquiries, and will greatly tend to the solution
of a question, upon which the public interest requires that sentence
should be pronounced as soon as possible.
Louvre, July the 9th, 1784.
(Signed) GEOFFROY,
DESPERRIERES,
JEANROI,
DEFOURCROY,
CHAMBON,
VICQ D’AZYR.
REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS, &c.
The king named, on the twelfth of March 1784, four physicians of the
faculty of Paris, messieurs Borie, Sallin, d’Arcet, Guillotin, to
enter into the examination, and to lay before him an account of the
animal magnetism practised by M. Deslon: and upon the petition of these
physicians, his majesty joined with them, for the purpose of this
inquisition, five members of the royal academy of sciences, messieurs
Franklin, le Roy, Bailly, de Borie, Lavoisier. M. Borie having died in
the commencement of the business, his majesty appointed M. Majault,
doctor of the faculty, to replace him.
M. Mesmer has described the agent he professes to have discovered,
and to which he has given the appellation of animal magnetism, in the
following manner. “It is a fluid universally diffused; the vehicle
of a mutual influence between the celestial bodies, the earth and
the bodies of animated beings; it is so continued as to admit of no
vacuum; its subtlety does not admit of illustration; it is capable
of receiving, propagating and communicating all the impressions that
are incident to motion; it is susceptible of flux and reflux. The
animal body is subject to the effects of this agent; and these effects
are immediately produced by the agent insinuating itself into the
substance of the nerves. We particularly discover in the human body
qualities analogous to those of the loadstone; we distinguish in it
poles different and opposite. The action and the virtue of the animal
magnetism are capable of being communicated from one body to another,
animated or inanimate; they exert themselves to considerable distances,
and without the least assistance from any intermediate bodies: this
action is increased and reflected by mirrors; it is communicated,
propagated and augmented by sound; and the virtue itself is capable of
being accumulated, concentrated and transferred. Though the fluid be
universal all animal bodies are not equally susceptible of it; there
even are some, though very few, of so opposite a nature, as by their
mere presence to supersede its effects upon any other contiguous bodies.
“The animal magnetism is capable of curing immediately diseases of
the nerves, and mediately other distempers; it improves the action
of medicines; it forwards and directs the salutary crises so as to
subject them totally to the government of the judgment; by means of
it the physician becomes acquainted with the state of health of each
individual, and decides with certainty upon the causes, the nature and
the progress of the most complicated distempers; it prevents their
increase, and effects their extirpation, without at any time exposing
the patient, whatever be his age, sex or constitution, to alarming
incidents, or unpleasing consequences[6].” “In the influence of the
magnetism, nature holds out to us a sovereign instrument for securing
the health and lengthening the existence of mankind[7].”
Such is the agent, with the examination of which the commissioners
have been charged, and whose properties are avowed by M. Deslon, who
admits all the principles of M. Mesmer. This theory forms the basis of
a memoir, which was read at the house of M. Deslon, on the ninth day
of May, in the presence of M. the lieutenant general of the police,
and the commissioners. It is asserted in this memoir, that there is
but one nature, one distemper and one remedy; and this remedy is the
animal magnetism. This physician, at the same time that he acquainted
the commissioners with the doctrine and process of the magnetism,
instructed them in its practice by discovering to them the poles, and
shewing them the manner of touching the diseased, and directing in
regard to them the magnetic fluid.
M. Deslon undertook to the commissioners, in the first place, to evince
the existence of the animal magnetism; secondly, to communicate to them
his knowledge respecting this discovery; and thirdly, to prove the
utility of this discovery and of the animal magnetism in the cure of
diseases.
After having thus made themselves acquainted with the theory and
practice of the animal magnetism, it was necessary to observe its
effects. For this purpose the commissioners adjourned themselves, and
each of them repeatedly witnessed the public method of M. Deslon.
They saw in the centre of a large apartment a circular box, made of
oak, and about a foot or a foot and an half deep, which is called the
bucket;[8] the lid of this box is pierced with a number of holes, in
which are inserted branches of iron, elbowed and moveable. The patients
are arranged in ranks about this bucket, and each has his branch of
iron, which by means of the elbow may be applied immediately to the
part affected; a cord passed round their bodies connects them one with
the other: sometimes a second means of communication is introduced, by
the insertion of the thumb of each patient between the forefinger and
thumb of the patient next him; the thumb thus inserted is pressed by
the person holding it; the impression received by the left hand of the
patient, communicates through his right, and thus passes through the
whole circle.
A piano forté is placed in one corner of the apartment, and different
airs are played with various degrees of rapidity; vocal music is
sometimes added to the instrumental.
The persons who superintend the process, have each of them an iron rod
in his hand, from ten to twelve inches in length.
M. Deslon made to the commissioners the following declarations. 1st.
That this rod is a conductor of the magnetism, has the power of
concentring it at its point, and of rendering its emanations more
considerable. 2dly. That sound, conformably to the theory of M. Mesmer,
is also a conductor of the magnetism, and that to communicate the fluid
to the piano forté, nothing more is necessary than to approach to it
the iron rod; that the person who plays upon the instrument furnishes
also a portion of the fluid, and that the magnetism is transmitted by
the sounds to the surrounding patients. 3dly. That the cord which is
passed round the bodies of the patients is destined, as well as the
union of their fingers, to augment the effects by communication. 4thly.
That the interior part of the bucket is so constructed as to concentre
the magnetism, and is a grand reservoir, from which the fluid is
diffused through the branches of iron that are inserted in its lid.
The commissioners in the progress of their examination discovered, by
means of an electrometer and a needle of iron not touched with the
loadstone, that the bucket contained no substance either electric
or magnetical; and from the detail that M. Deslon has made to them
respecting the interior construction of the bucket, they cannot infer
any physical agent, capable of contributing to the imputed effects of
the magnetism.
The patients then, arranged in considerable number and in successive
ranks round the bucket, derive the magnetic virtue at once from all
these conveyances: from the branches of iron, which transmit to them
that of the bucket; from the cord which is passed round their bodies,
and the union of their fingers, which communicate to them that of their
neighbours; and from the sound of the piano forté, or of a musical
voice, which diffuses it through the air. The patients are beside
magnetised directly, by means of a finger or a bar of iron, guided
before the face, above or behind the head, and over the surface of the
parts affected, the distinction of the poles still observed; they are
also acted upon by a look, and by having their attention excited. But
especially they are magnetised by the application of the hands, and by
the pressure of the fingers upon the hypochonders and the regions of
the lower belly; an application frequently continued for a long time,
sometimes for several hours.
In this situation the patients offer a spectacle extremely varied in
proportion to their different habits of body. Some of them are calm,
tranquil and unconscious to any sensation; others cough, spit, are
affected with a slight degree of pain, a partial or an universal
burning, and perspirations; a third class are agitated and tormented
with convulsions. These convulsions are rendered extraordinary by
their frequency, their violence and their duration. As soon as one
person is convulsed, others presently are affected by that symptom.
The commissioners saw accesses of this kind, which lasted upwards of
three hours; they were accompanied with expectorations of a thick and
viscous water, brought away by the violence of the efforts. Sometimes
these expectorations were accompanied with small quantities of blood;
and there is among others a lad, a patient, who has frequently brought
up blood in considerable abundance. These convulsions are characterised
by precipitate and involuntary motions of all the limbs or of the whole
body, by a contraction of the throat, by sudden affections of the
hypochonders and the epigastrium, by a distraction and wildness in the
eyes, by shrieks, tears, hiccuppings, and immoderate laughter. They
are either preceded or followed by a state of languor and reverie, by
a species of dejection and even drowsiness. The least unforeseen noise
occasions starting; and it has been observed, that the changing of
the key and the time, in the airs played upon the piano forté, had an
effect upon the patients; so that a quicker motion agitates them more,
and renews the vivacity of their convulsions.
There is an apartment lined with quilting, which was originally
destined for the patients in whom the magnetism produced convulsions,
and is denominated the apartment of crises; but M. Deslon has not
judged proper to make any use of it; and all the patients, whatever be
the accidents of their situation, are placed together in the apartment
of public proceeding.
Nothing can be more astonishing than the sight of these convulsions;
he that has not had it, can have no idea of it: and in beholding it,
a man is not less struck with the profound repose of one class of
patients, than with the violence which agitates another; he observes
with admiration the various accidents that are repeated, and the
sympathies that are developed. He sees some patients seek each other
with eagerness; and in approaching smile, converse with all the
demonstrations of attachment, and soothe their mutual crises. They
are entirely under the government of the person who distributes the
magnetic virtue: in vain they may appear to be in a state of the
extremest drowsiness, his voice, a look, a sign from him rouses
them. It is impossible not to recognise in these regular effects an
extraordinary influence, acting upon the patients, making itself master
of them, and of which he who superintends the process, appears to be
the depository.
These convulsive affections are improperly stiled crises in the theory
of the animal magnetism: according to this doctrine indeed they are
regarded as a salutary crisis, of the same kind as those which nature
produces, or which a skilful physician has the art to excite to
facilitate the cure of diseases. The commissioners will adopt this
expression in the following report; and, wherever they employ the word
crisis, they will always understand the convulsive, drowsy or lethargic
affections, produced by the means of the animal magnetism.
The commissioners observed, that in the number of patients in the state
of crisis, there were always many women and few men: that it was one
or two hours before these crises took place; and that, when one had
taken place, all the others commenced successively, and without any
considerable interval. But after having made these general remarks,
the commissioners were speedily of opinion, that the public process
could not be made the scene of their experiments. The multiplicity
of the effects is one obstacle; too many things are seen at once
for any one of them to be seen well. Beside, the patients of rank,
who repair hither upon account of their health, might be displeased
with the enquiries of the commissioners; the very act of watching
them might appear a nuisance; and the recollection of this might be
burdensome, and impede the commissioners in their turn. They therefore
resolved, that as their frequent attendance at the public process was
unnecessary, it would be sufficient for a few of them to go from time
to time, to confirm the former general observations, to make new ones
in case an opportunity should occur for that purpose, and to report
them to the commission assembled.
After having observed these effects at the public process, it behoved
them, in the next place, to endeavour to discover their causes, and
enquire into the proofs of the existence and utility of the magnetism.
The question of its existence is first in order; that of its utility it
were idle to examine, till the other shall have been fully resolved.
The animal magnetism may indeed exist without being useful, but it
cannot be useful if it do not exist.
Of consequence the first object of attention with the commissioners,
and the direct tendency of their first experiments, ought to be
the ascertaining this existence. Again, this was itself an object
of considerable comprehension, and had need of being simplified.
The animal magnetism embraces the whole compass of nature; it is
the vehicle, we are told, of the influence exerted upon us by the
celestial bodies; the commissioners were of opinion, that they ought,
in the first place, to leave this more extensive influence out of the
question, and to consider only that part of the fluid which is diffused
over the earth, without troubling themselves with whence it comes; in a
word, to evince the action it exercises upon us, around us, and within
the sphere of our inspection, before they undertook to examine its
relation to the universe.
The most certain method of determining the existence of the animal
magnetic fluid, would have been, to have rendered its presence capable
of being perceived by the senses; but much time was not necessary
to convince the commissioners that this fluid is too subtle to be
subjected to their observation. It is not, like the electrical fluid,
luminous and visible; its action is not, like the attraction of the
loadstone, the object of our sight; it has neither taste nor smell;
its process is silent, and it surrounds you or penetrates your frame,
without your being informed of its presence by the sense of touch. If
therefore it exist in us and around us, it is after a manner perfectly
insensible. There are persons among those who profess the magnetism,
who pretend that it may sometimes be seen passing from the extremity
of the fingers, which serve it for conductors, or who believe that
they feel its passage when you guide your finger before their face, or
along their hand. In the first of these cases, the emanation perceived
is merely that of transpiration, which becomes completely visible when
viewed through a solar microscope; in the second, the impression of
cold or freshness which is felt, an impression by so much the more
perceptible the warmer one is, results from the motion of the air which
follows the finger, and the degree of whose temperature is always below
that of animal heat. When, on the other hand, the finger is approached
to the surface of the face, which is colder than the finger, and it is
held at rest, the consequence is a sensation of heat, which is no other
than the communication of the animal heat.
It is also pretended that this fluid has a smell, and that it is
perceived when either the finger or an iron conductor is brought into
contiguity with the nostrils; it is even said, that the sensation is
different, according as the finger or the rod of iron is directed
parallel with, or opposite to the poles. M. Deslon made the experiment
upon several of the commissioners; the commissioners themselves have
repeated it upon different subjects; not one has experienced this
difference of sensation: and if, by giving a close attention, any
scent has been perceived, it has been that of the iron, when the rod
has been presented rubbed and heated; or that of the emanation of the
transpiration, when the finger has been presented, a scent frequently
combined with that of the iron with which the finger itself has been
impressed. These effects have been erroneously attributed to the
magnetism, but they may be traced in reality to natural and definite
causes.
Indeed M. Deslon has never insisted upon these transient impressions,
he did not think they were to be offered in evidence; on the contrary
he expressly assured the commissioners, that he could not demonstrate
to them the existence of the magnetism, otherwise than by the action
of this fluid, producing certain changes in animated bodies. This
existence is so much the more difficult to be demonstrated by effects,
which shall be incontrovertible, and whose causes shall be unequivocal;
by authentic facts, in cases where moral circumstances cannot exert
their influence: in a word, by proofs calculated to convince and compel
the understanding, the only ones which can yield any solid satisfaction
to persons really proficient in the study of nature.
The action of the magnetism upon animated bodies may be observed in two
different ways; either as it consists in that action continued for a
long time, and in its salutary effects in the treatment of diseases, or
in its momentary effects upon the animal œconomy and the perceptible
changes there produced. M. Deslon insisted that the former of these
methods should be employed principally, and nearly exclusively; the
commissioners have been of a different opinion, and their reasons are
as follow.
The majority of diseases have their seat in the interior part of our
frame. The collective experience of a great number of centuries has
made us acquainted with the symptoms, which indicate and discriminate
them; the same experience has taught the method in which they are to
be treated. What is the object of the efforts of the physician in this
method? It is not to oppose and to subdue nature, it is to assist her
in her operations. Nature, says the father of the medical science,
cures the diseased; but sometimes she encounters obstacles, which
constrain her in her course, and uselessly consume her strength. The
physician is the minister of nature; an attentive observer, he studies
the method in which she proceeds. If that method be firm, strong,
regular and well directed, the physician looks on in silence, and
bewares of disturbing it by remedies which would at least be useless;
if the method be embarrassed, he facilitates it; if it be too slow or
too rapid, he accelerates or retards it. Sometimes, to accomplish his
object, he confines himself to the regulation of the diet: sometimes
he employs medicines. The action of a medicine, introduced into the
human body, is a new force, combined with the principal force by which
our life is maintained: if the remedy follow the same route, which
this force has already opened for the expulsion of diseases, it is
useful, it is salutary; if it tend to open different routes, and to
turn aside this interior action, it is pernicious. In the mean time it
must be confessed that this salutary or pernicious influence, real as
it is, may frequently escape common observation. The natural history
of man presents us in this respect with very singular phenomena. It
may be there seen that regimens the most opposite, have not prevented
the attainment of an advanced old age. We may there see men, attacked
according to all appearance with the same disease, recovering in the
pursuit of opposite regimens, and in the use of remedies totally
different from each other; nature is in these instances sufficiently
powerful to maintain the vital principle in spite of the improper
regimen, and to triumph at once over the distemper and the remedy. If
it have this power of resisting the action of medicine, by a still
stronger reason it must have the power of operating without medicine.
The experience of the efficacy of remedies is always therefore attended
with some uncertainty; in the case of the magnetism the uncertainty has
this addition, the uncertainty of its existence. How then can we decide
upon the action of an agent, whose existence is contested, from the
treatment of diseases; when the effect of medicines is doubtful, whose
existence is not at all problematical?
The cure which is principally cited in favour of the magnetism is
that of M. le baron de ----; all classes are acquainted with its
history. We shall not here enter into a discussion of the facts; we
shall not enquire whether the remedies precedingly employed might have
contributed to this cure. On the one hand the very critical situation
of the patient is admitted, and on the other the inefficacy of all the
ordinary means of medical science; the magnetism has been employed
and M. le baron de ---- has completely recovered. But might not a
natural crisis have singly operated this recovery? A woman of low
rank and extremely poor, who lived at the Gros-caillou, was attacked
in 1779 with a malignant fever in all its symptoms; she resolutely
refused every assistance, she only desired that a vessel which she
had near her should be kept constantly replenished with water: she
remained quiet upon the straw which served her for a bed, drinking
water continually and doing nothing more. The disease developed itself,
passed successively through its different stages, and terminated in a
complete cure[9]. Mademoiselle G----, who lived at the lesser royal
mews, had two indurations formed in her right breast, which gave her
great pain; a surgeon recommended to her the use of the Eau du Peintre
as an excellent dissolvent; at the same time informing her, that if
this remedy did not succeed in a month, it would be necessary to
extirpate them by incision. The young lady, terrified at this sentence,
consulted M. Sallin, who gave it as his opinion that the indurations
were susceptible of resolution; M. Bonvart, who was also consulted,
confirmed the opinion of M. Sallin. Before entering upon any course of
remedy, they prescribed dissipation; fifteen days after she was seized
at the opera with a violent cough, and so profuse an expectoration,
that she was obliged to be carried home; she spit in the space of four
hours about three pints of a viscid lymph; one hour after this M.
Sallin examined the breast, he discovered no trace of induration. M.
Bouvart, called in the next day, proved on his part the happy effect of
this natural crisis. If mademoiselle G---- had taken Eau du Peintre,
the honour of her cure would have been attributed to this medicine.
The uninterrupted observation of ages proves, and the professors of
physic acknowledge, that nature alone and without our interference,
cures a great number of persons. If the magnetism were absolutely
inactive, the patients, who undergo this method of cure, might be
considered as abandoned to nature. It would be absurd to chuse a method
of deciding upon the existence of this agent, which, by attributing to
it all the cures performed by nature, would tend to prove that it had
an action useful and curative, when in reality it might have no action
at all.
Upon this head the commissioners are of the opinion of M. Mesmer.
He rejected the cure of diseases, when this method of proving the
magnetism was proposed to him by a member of the academy of sciences:
“It is a mistake,” replied he, “to imagine that this kind of proof is
unanswerable; it cannot be demonstrated that either the physician or
the medicine causes the recovery of the patient[10].”
The treatment of diseases can therefore furnish nothing but a result,
always uncertain, often deceitful; nor can this uncertainty be
dissipated, and all the causes of illusion compensated, but by an
infinity of cures, perhaps by the experience of successive centuries.
The object and importance of the commission demand means of a speedier
description. It was the duty of the commissioners to confine themselves
to arguments purely physical, that is, to the momentaneous effects of
the fluid upon the animal frame, excluding from these effects all the
illusions which might mix with them, and assuring themselves that they
could proceed from no other cause than the animal magnetism.
They proposed to make experiments upon single subjects, who might
be willing to submit to the various experiments which they should
invent; and who, some of them by their simplicity, and others by their
intelligence, should be capable of giving an exact and faithful
account of their sensations. These experiments we shall not confine
ourselves to relate in the order of time, but shall follow the order of
the facts they were intended to elucidate.
The commissioners in the first place resolved to make their first
experiments upon themselves, and personally to experience the action
of the magnetism. They were extremely curious to become acquainted
by their own sensations with the effects ascribed to this agent.
They therefore submitted themselves to these effects, and in such a
disposition, that they would not have been sorry to have undergone some
accidents and a partial derangement of health, which being evidently
produced by the operation of the magnetism, should have enabled them
to decide this important question upon the spot, and with their own
testimony. But in submitting themselves to the magnetism in this
manner, the commissioners have employed one necessary precaution. There
is not an individual, in a state of the fullest health, who, if he paid
a close attention to the point, would not be sensible to an infinity of
interior motions and variations, either of a pain infinitely slight, or
of heat in different parts of his body; these variations which exist at
all times are independent of the magnetism. To turn and fix in this
manner ones attention upon oneself, is not perhaps itself entirely
without its effects. There is so intimate a connection, whatever be the
vehicle of that connection, between the volitions of the soul and the
motions of the body, that it is not easy to prescribe limits to the
influence of attention, which appears to be nothing more than a train
of volitions, directed, constantly and without interruption, to the
same object. When we recollect that the arm is moved by the will as it
pleases, how can we be certain, that the attention being fixed upon
some interior part of our frame, may not excite some slight emotion in
it, direct the heat towards it, and so modify its actual situation as
to produce in it new sensations? The first thing therefore, to which
the commissioners were bound to attend, was not to observe too minutely
what passed within them. If the magnetism were a real and operative
cause, there was no need that it should be made an object of thought,
in order to its action and manifesting itself: it ought, so to express
ourselves, to compel and arrest the attention, and to render itself
perceptible to a mind that should even be distracted from it by design.
But in determining to make experiments upon themselves, the
commissioners unanimously resolved to make those experiments private,
without admitting any stranger, except M. Deslon, by whom the
operation was to be performed, or such persons as they should chuse; in
like manner they engaged not to submit to the magnetism at the public
process, in order that they might discuss freely their observations,
and be in all events the sole, or at least the first judges of the
symptoms observed.
In pursuance of these determinations, a particular apartment and a
separate bucket were destined for their use in the house of M. Deslon,
and the commissioners repaired thither once in the course of every
week. The operation was continued in each experiment for two hours and
a half, the branch of iron being in contact with the left hypochonder,
surrounded with a cord of communication, and forming from time to time
the chain of fingers and thumbs. They were magnetised either by M.
Deslon, or, in his absence, by one of his pupils; some of them for a
longer time and more frequently than others, and those with whom this
was the case were the commissioners who appeared from constitution and
habit the most susceptible. The operation was performed sometimes with
the finger and the rod of iron presented and guided along the different
parts of the body, sometimes by the application of the hands and the
pressure of the fingers, either upon the hypochonders, or upon the pit
of the stomach.
Not one of the commissioners felt any sensation, or at least none
which ought to be ascribed to the action of the magnetism. Some of
the commissioners are of a robust constitution; others have more
delicate habits, and are subject to interruptions of their health:
one of these last, was sensible of a slight pain at the pit of the
stomach, in consequence of a considerable pressure that was employed
upon that part. This pain continued all that and the next day, and
was accompanied with a sensation of fatigue and dejection. Another
felt, in the afternoon of one of the days in which the experiments
were performed, a slight irritation of the nerves, to which he is
very subject. A third, endowed with a still greater sensibility, and
especially with an extreme restlessness of the nerves, was subject to
a higher degree of pain and a more perceptible irritation; but these
lesser accidents are the result of perpetual and ordinary variations
in the state of their health, and are of consequence foreign to the
operation they had undergone, or proceed only from the pressure
employed upon the region of the stomach. The commissioners do not speak
of these slight details, but from a scrupulous fidelity; they relate
them, because they have imposed it as a law upon themselves constantly
and in every particular to lay the truth.
The commissioners could not avoid being struck with the difference of
the private experiment made upon themselves from the public process.
All was calm and silence in the one, all restlessness and agitation
in the other; there multiplied symptoms, violent crises, the ordinary
state both of body and mind interrupted and overthrown, and nature
wrought up to the highest pitch; here the body free from pain, and
the mind from anxiety, nature preserving her ordinary course and her
equilibrium, in a word the absolute privation of every kind of effect:
the stupendous influence, which creates such an astonishment in the
public process, appears no longer; the magnetism stripped of its energy
seems perfectly supine and inactive.
The commissioners, having at first submitted to the experiment only
once a week, were desirous to ascertain whether a continuity of
experiment would produce any effect; they submitted to it three days
successively, but their insensibility was the same, and the magnetism
appeared with respect to them perfectly impotent. This experiment, made
at once upon eight different subjects, several of whom were subject to
habitual derangements of health, authorises the conclusion that the
magnetism has little or no action in a state of health, or even in a
state of lesser infirmity. We then resolved to make experiments upon
persons really diseased, and we chose them out of the lower class.
Seven of these were assembled at Passy, at the house of Dr. Franklin;
the operation was performed upon them by M. Deslon in the presence of
all the commissioners.
The widow Saint-Amand, asthmatic, having the belly, legs and thighs
swelled; and dame Anseaume, who had a swelling upon her thigh, felt
no sensation; the little Claude Renard, a child of six years of age,
scrophulous, almost consumptive, having the knees swelled, the legs
bent inward, and the articulation nearly deprived of motion, a very
interesting child, and possessing a greater degree of understanding
than is usual at his age, was likewise conscious to no sensation; any
more than Geneviève Leroux, nine years of age, subject to convulsions,
and to a disorder greatly resembling that which is called St. Vitus’s
Dance. François Grenet experienced some effects; he had a distemper
in his eyes, particularly in the right, in which he had scarcely
any sight, and in which there was a considerable tumour. When the
operation was directed towards the left eye, by approaching and moving
backward and forward the thumb very near and for a considerable time,
he was sensible of a pain in the ball of the eye, and the eye watered.
When the operation was directed to the right eye, which was the most
disordered, he felt no sensation in it; he felt the same pain in the
left eye, and nothing in any other part of the body.
Dame Charpentier, who had been thrown down against a log of wood by a
cow two years before, had experienced the most unfortunate consequences
from this accident; she lost her sight, recovered it afterwards in
part, but remained in a state of habitual infirmities; she declared
that she had two ruptures, and the belly of so great sensibility, that
she could not bear the pressure of the strings of her petticoats: this
sensibility belongs to the case of nervous irritation; the slightest
pressure upon the region of the belly is capable of determining this
irritation, and producing, through the correspondence of the nerves,
effects in every part of the body.
The operation was performed upon this woman as upon the rest by
the application and the pressure of the fingers; the pressure was
extremely painful to her: afterwards, in directing the finger towards
the rupture, she complained of a pain in her head; the finger being
placed before her face, she said she could not draw her breath. Upon
the repeated motion of the finger upwards and downwards, she had
sudden starts of the head and shoulders, like those which are commonly
occasioned by surprise mixed with terror, for instance that of a
person who has some drops of cold water suddenly thrown in his face.
She appeared to have the same startings when her eyes were closed.
The fingers being held under her nose, while her eyes were shut, she
complained of a sensation of faintness so long as they were continued
there. The seventh subject, Joseph Ennuyé, experienced sensations of a
similar nature, but much less considerable.
Of these seven patients four felt no sensation at all; three
experienced some effects from the operation. These effects deserved to
engage the attention of the commissioners, and demanded an accurate
examination.
The commissioners, to obtain further light, and to define their
ideas upon this part of the subject, resolved to make the experiment
upon patients, placed in other circumstances, and selected from the
polite world; such as could not be suspected of sinister views, and
whose understanding made them capable of enquiring into and giving
a faithful account of their sensations. Mesdames de B---- and de
V----, messieurs M---- and R---- were admitted to the private bucket
together with the commissioners; they were intreated to remark their
sensations, without fixing upon them too regular an attention. M.
M---- and madame de V---- were the only persons who experienced any
sensation. M. M---- had an indolent tumour over the whole articulation
of the knee, and a constant pain in the patella. He declared, during
the operation, that he felt nothing in any part of his body, except
in the moment that the finger was guided before the diseased knee;
he then thought that he felt a slight degree of heat in the place,
in which he has habitually the sensation of pain. Madame de V----,
attacked with a nervous disorder, was several times upon the point of
falling asleep during the operation. The experiment having continued
for an hour and nineteen minutes without interruption, and for the
greater part by the application of the hands, she was sensible to
nothing but a sensation of irritation and dejection. These two subjects
underwent the experiment only once. M. R----, whose distemper was
the remainder of an obstruction in the liver, the consequence of a
very violent disorder of that kind ill cured, underwent the operation
three times and felt nothing. Madame de B----, severely attacked with
obstructions, underwent the experiment constantly at the same time
with the commissioners, and felt nothing; it is necessary to observe,
that she submitted to the magnetism with an extreme tranquility, which
originated in the highest degree of incredulity.
Experiments were made at other times upon different subjects, but
without the assistance of the bucket. One of the commissioners, in a
violent head-ach, had the operation performed upon him by M. Deslon
for half an hour; one of the symptoms of his disorder was an extreme
cold in his feet. M. Deslon brought his foot near that of the patient,
the foot was never the warmer, and the head-ach lasted its ordinary
term. The patient, having placed himself near a fire, obtained from it
the salutary effects which heat has constantly procured him, without
experiencing, either during that day or the night following, any effect
from the magnetism.
Dr. Franklin, though the weakness of his health hindered him from
coming to Paris, and assisting at the experiments which were there
made, was magnetised by M. Deslon at his own house at Passy. The
assembly was numerous; every person who was present underwent the
operation. Some sick persons, who had come with M. Deslon, were subject
to the effects of the magnetism in the same manner as at the public
process; but madame de B----, Dr. Franklin, his two relations, his
secretary, and an American officer, felt no sensation, though one of
Dr. Franklin’s relations was convalescent, and the American officer had
at that time a regular fever.
The experiments we have related, furnish a number of facts, calculated
to illustrate, and fit to be compared with each other, and from which
the commissioners were at liberty to deduce certain inferences. Of
fourteen sick persons five only appeared to feel any effect from the
operation, nine felt no effect at all. The commissioner, who had
the head-ach and coldness in the feet, derived no benefit from the
magnetism, nor did his feet recover their natural heat. This agent
has not therefore the property which has been attributed to it of
communicating heat to the feet. The magnetism has also been said
to have the property of discovering the species, and particularly
the seat of diseases, by the pain, which the action of this fluid
infallibly occasions in that part. Such an advantage would be of
great consequence; the fluid which was the instrument of it would
be a valuable means in the hands of the physician, often deceived
by equivocal symptoms: but François Grenet felt no sensation, no
pain, but in the eye least affected. If the redness and tumour of
the other eye had not furnished external symptoms, in judging from
the effect of the magnetism we should have been led to conclude that
it was undistempered. M. R---- and madame de B----, both attacked
with obstructions, and madame de B---- with great severity, as they
were conscious to no sensation, would have received no intelligence,
either respecting the species, or the seat of their disease. And yet
obstructions are among the disorders, which are said to be particularly
subject to the action of the magnetism; since according to the new
theory the free and rapid circulation of this fluid through the nerves,
is a means of opening the channels and destroying the obstacles, that
is, the obstructions, which it encounters in its passage. It is at
the same time said that the magnetism is the touchstone of health:
if therefore M. R---- and madame de B---- had not experienced the
derangements and the sufferings inseparable from obstructions, they
would have had a right to believe that they enjoyed the best health
in the world. The same thing may be said of the American officer: the
magnetism therefore announced as the discoverer of diseases completely
failed of its effect.
The heat that M. M---- felt in the patella, is an effect too slight
and fugitive to authorise any conclusions. It may be suspected
that it proceeded from the cause already descanted on, a too great
attention to observe what passes within us: the same attention would
discover similar sensations at any other time, when the magnetism
was not employed. The drowsiness experienced by madame de V---- must
undoubtedly be ascribed to the regularity and fatigue of preserving the
same situation; if she was sensible to any vaporous emotion, it must be
remembered that it is a known property of nervous affections, to have
much dependency upon the attention that is paid them; to renew them it
is only necessary to hear them spoken of, or to think of them. It is
easy to judge what ought to be expected from a woman, whose nerves are
extremely irritable, and who, being magnetised for an hour and nineteen
minutes, had during that time no other subject of reflection than
that of the disorders which are habitual to her. She might have had a
nervous crisis more considerable than that we have described, without
our having a right to be surprised at it.
There remains then only the effects produced upon dame Charpentier,
François Grenet and Joseph Ennuyé, which can be supposed to derive
from the operation of the magnetism. In comparing these three
particular facts to the rest, the commissioners were astonished
that three subjects of the lower class should be the only ones who
felt any thing from the operation, while those of a more elevated
rank, of more enlightened understandings, and better qualified to
describe their sensations, have felt nothing. Without doubt François
Grenet experienced a pain and a watering in the eye when the thumb
was approached very near to it; dame Charpentier complained, that in
touching her stomach the pressure corresponded to her rupture; and the
pressure might have been in part the cause of what she felt; but the
commissioners suspected that these sensations were augmented by moral
causes.
Let us represent to ourselves the situation of a person of the lower
class, and of consequence ignorant, attacked with a distemper and
desirous of a cure, introduced with some degree of ceremony to a large
company, partly composed of physicians, where an operation is performed
upon him totally new, and from which he persuades himself before hand
that he is about to experience prodigious effects. Let us add to this
that he is paid for his compliance, that he thinks he shall contribute
more to our satisfaction by professing to experience sensations of
some kind; and we shall have definite causes to which to attribute
these effects; we shall at least have just reason to doubt whether
their true cause be the magnetism.
Beside this it may be enquired, why the magnetism produced these
effects upon persons, who knew what was done to them, and might imagine
they had an interest in saying what they said, while it took no sort of
hold upon the little Claude Renard, upon an organisation endowed with
all the delicacy of infancy, so irritable, so susceptible? The sound
understanding and ingenuous temper of this child evince the veracity of
his relation. Why too has this agent produced no effect upon Geneviève
Leroux, who was in a perpetual state of convulsion? Her nerves were
certainly sufficiently irritable, how comes it that the magnetism
did not display its power, either in augmenting, or diminishing her
convulsions? Her indifference and impassibility induced the belief,
that the reason of her having felt nothing, was the idiotism which did
not permit her to judge that she ought to have felt any thing.
From these facts the commissioners are at liberty to observe, that the
magnetism has seemed to have no existence for those subjects, who have
submitted to it with any degree of incredulity; that the commissioners,
even those who have their nerves most irritable, having expressly
turned their attention to other objects, and having armed themselves
with that philosophic doubt which ought always to accompany enquiry,
have felt none of those sensations, which were experienced by the
three patients of the lower class; and they have a right to suspect
that these sensations, supposing their reality, were the fruits of
anticipated persuasion, and might be operated by the mere force of
imagination. Of this suspicion another class of experiments has been
the result. Their subsequent researches were directed towards a new
object; it was necessary to destroy or confirm the suspicion they had
formed, to determine to what degree the power of the imagination can
influence our sensations, and to demonstrate whether it can be the
cause, in whole or in part, of the effects attributed to the magnetism.
At this time the commissioners heard of the experiments, which were
made at the house of M. the dean of the faculty by M. Jumelin,
doctor of physic; they were desirous of seeing these experiments,
and they met M. Jumelin in a body at the house of M. Majault, one
of the commissioners. M. Jumelin declared to them that he was a
disciple neither of M. Mesmer, nor of M. Deslon; he had learned
nothing respecting the animal magnetism from them, but had formed
his principles and digested his process from what he had heard upon
the subject in conversation. His principles consist in regarding the
animal magnetic fluid, as a fluid which circulates in the human body,
and which flows from it, but which is essentially the same with the
principle of animal heat; like all other fluids he conceived that
it tended to an equilibrium, and that it therefore passes from the
body in which the greatest quantity of it resides, into that which
has the least. His method does not differ from that of messieurs
Mesmer and Deslon less than his principles; like them he performs the
operation with the finger and the rod of iron as conductors, and by the
application of the hands, but without any distinction of poles.
Eight men and two women submitted to the operation in the first
experiment, and felt nothing; at length a woman, who waits in the hall
of M. Alphonse le Roy, doctor of physic, having been magnetised in the
forehead, but without touching her, said that she felt the sensation of
heat. M. Jumelin guiding his hand, and presenting the five extremities
of his fingers over the whole of her face, she said that she felt as
it were a flame, that passed from place to place; magnetised in the
stomach she said that she felt heat; magnetised upon the back she made
the same declaration: she also said that she felt hot in every part of
her body, and that her head ached.
The commissioners, observing that, of eleven persons that underwent the
experiment, one only had been sensible to the magnetism of M. Jumelin,
were of opinion that this person had experienced certain sensations,
only because she had probably an imagination more easily excited than
the rest: the opportunity was favourable for clearing up the point. The
sensibility of this woman being perfectly established, the business
was only to protect her from the illusions of the imagination, or
at least to leave her imagination without any thing to direct its
operations. The commissioners proposed to blindfold her, in order to
observe what her sensations would be, when she could no longer know any
thing respecting the conduct of the experiment. She was accordingly
blindfolded and magnetised; the phenomena no longer answered to
the places towards which the magnetism was directed. Magnetised
successively upon the stomach and in the back, she felt only a heat in
her head, a pain in both eyes and in the left ear.
The bandage was removed from her eyes, and M. Jumelin having applied
his hands upon the hypochonders, she said that she felt heat; after a
few minutes she said that she was ready to faint, and she fainted in
effect. When she was tolerably recovered, the experiment was resumed,
she was blindfolded, M. Jumelin was removed, silence recommended, and
the woman was induced to believe that the operation was performing. The
effects were the same, though no operation, either near or distant was
performed; she felt the same heat, the same pain in her eyes and in her
ears; besides which she felt a heat in her back and loins.
After a quarter of an hour, a sign was made to M. Jumelin to magnetise
her in the stomach, she felt no sensation; in the back, it was the same
thing. The sensations diminished instead of augmenting. The pains in
her head continued, the heat in her back and loins ceased.
We see in this instance certain effects produced, and these similar to
those which were experienced by the three subjects, respecting whom the
experiment has already been detailed. But the former and the latter
were obtained in different methods; it follows that this difference is
of no consequence. The process of messieurs Mesmer and Deslon, and an
opposite process have produced the same phenomena. The distinction of
poles is therefore chimerical.
It may be observed that while the woman was permitted to see the
operation, she placed her sensations precisely in the part towards
which it was directed; that on the other hand when she did not see
the operation, she placed them at hazard, and in parts very distant
from those which were the object of the magnetism. It was natural to
conclude that these sensations, real or pretended, were determined
by the imagination. Of this we were convinced when we saw that being
entirely at rest, the preceding sensations having ceased, and the
bandage being fixed over her eyes, this woman experienced all the same
effects, though no operation was performed; but the demonstration
was complete, when after a remission of a quarter of an hour, her
imagination being undoubtedly cooled and worn down, the effects, in the
room of augmenting, diminished at the moment in which the operation was
actually renewed.
If she was seized with a faintness, women are sometimes liable to this
accident from their garments being tight or otherwise burdensome. The
application of the hands upon the hypochonders was capable of producing
the same effect upon a woman extremely susceptible; but there is no
need of having recourse to this cause to explain the appearance. The
weather was extremely hot, the woman had unquestionably felt some
emotion in the beginning of the experiment, she had made an effort upon
herself to submit to a new and unknown operation, and it is by no means
extraordinary that an effort, continued for a longer time than the
constitution will bear, should occasion a propensity to faint.
This swoon had therefore a natural known cause, but the sensations,
which she experienced when no operation was performed upon her, could
be only the result of imagination. In similar experiments, which M.
Jumelin made in the same place the next day, the commissioners being
present, upon a man who was blindfolded, and upon a woman who was not
blindfolded, the result was precisely the same; it was evident their
answers were determined by the questions that were put to them, that
is, the question pointed out where the sensation was expected to be; in
the room of directing the magnetism upon them, all that was done was
the exalting and directing their imagination. A child of five years of
age being afterwards magnetised, felt nothing but the heat which he had
just before contracted at play.
These experiments appeared sufficiently important to the commissioners,
for them to desire a repetition of them, in order to obtain further
light into the subject, and M. Jumelin had the complaisance to comply
with their request. It would be to no purpose to object, that the
method of M. Jumelin was a bad one; for at the present moment it was
not proposed to bring the magnetism, but the imagination to the proof.
The commissioners agreed to blindfold subjects who had already
undergone the magnetical operation, for the most part not to magnetise
them at all, but to put to them interrogations, so framed as to point
out to them their answers. This mode of proceeding was not calculated
to deceive them, it only misled their imagination. In reality, when
no operation was performed upon them, their sole answer ought to
have been, that they felt no sensation; and when the operation was
performed, the impression they felt, not the manner in which they were
interrogated, ought to have dictated their replies.
The commissioners adjourned themselves to the house of M. Jumelin; they
began with an experiment upon his servant. They fixed a bandage over
his eyes, prepared for the purpose, and which they employed in all the
succeeding experiments. The bandage was made of two calottes of elastic
gum, whose concavity was filled with edredon; the whole inclosed and
sown up in two pieces of stuff of a circular form. These pieces of
stuff were then fastened to each other, and to two strings which were
tied in a knot at the back part of the head. Placed over the eyes,
they left in their interval room for the nose, and the entire liberty
of respiration, without the person blindfolded being permitted to
receive even the smallest particle of light, either through, or above,
or below the bandage. These precautions having been contrived, with an
equal view to the convenience of the subject, and the certainty of the
result, the servant of M. Jumelin was persuaded that the operation was
performing upon him. Upon this he felt an almost universal sensation of
heat, and certain emotions in the region of the belly, together with
an extreme heaviness; by degrees he grew drowsy and appeared upon the
point of falling asleep. This experiment proves what we have already
said, that the symptom of drowsiness is the effect of situation and
weariness, not of the magnetism.
The same person being afterwards magnetised with his eyes uncovered,
and a rod of iron being presented to his forehead, he experienced
sensations of pricking: the bandage being then replaced and the
circumstance repeated, he was conscious to no sensation. The rod
of iron was then removed, and the patient being interrogated if he
felt nothing in his forehead, he declared that he felt something move
backward and forward from one side of it to the other.
M. B----, a man of learning, and particularly acquainted with the
science of medicine, was then blindfolded, and presented us with the
same spectacle, feeling certain sensations when he was not acted
upon, and often feeling nothing when the operation was performed.
These sensations went to such a length, that, previously to the being
magnetised in any manner, but believing that the operation had been
performing for ten minutes, he felt a heat in his loins which he
compared to that of a stove. It is evident that M. B---- had a very
strong sensation, since, in order to convey an idea of it, he thought
it necessary to have recourse to such a comparison; this sensation
however he owed solely to imagination, which was the only agent
concerned in the affair.
The commissioners, particularly those of the faculty of medicine,
made an infinite number of experiments upon different subjects, whom
they either magnetised themselves, or persuaded that they underwent
the operation. They performed the operation indifferently, either
opposite to, or in the direction of the poles or at right angles with
them, and in each case obtained the same effects; experiencing in all
these experiments no other difference, than that of an imagination
more or less susceptible[11]. They were therefore convinced that
the imagination alone is capable of producing various sensations,
and causing the patient to experience both pain and heat, and even a
very considerable degree of heat, in all parts of the body, and they
concluded that it of course entered for a considerable share into the
effects attributed to the animal magnetism. It must at the same time be
admitted, that the process of the magnetism produces in the animated
body changes more distinguished, and derangements more considerable,
than those we have just reported. None of those subjects, whom we
have hitherto described as the imaginary objects of the magnetical
operation, were so far impressed as to produce convulsions; it was
therefore a new subject for the experiments of the commissioners,
to enquire, whether by the mere energies of the imagination it were
possible to produce crises, similar to those which we have stated in
the public process.
Many experiments were thought of for the decision of this question.
When a tree has been touched according to the principles and method of
the magnetism, every person who stops under it, ought to experience
in a greater or less degree the effects of this agent; there have
even been some in this situation who have swooned, or experienced
convulsions. We communicated our ideas upon this subject to M. Deslon,
who replied, that the experiment ought to succeed, provided the
subject were extremely susceptible; and it was agreed that it should
be made at Passy in the presence of Dr. Franklin. The necessity that
the subject should be susceptible, led the commissioners to conceive,
that to render the experiment decisive and unanswerable, it was
necessary that it should be made upon a person of M. Deslon’s choice,
and of whose susceptibility to the operations of the magnetism he was
already convinced. M. Deslon therefore brought with him a boy of about
twelve years of age; an apricot tree was fixed upon in the orchard of
Dr. Franklin’s garden, considerably distant from any other tree, and
calculated for the preservation of the magnetical power which might
be impressed upon it. M. Deslon was led thither alone to perform the
operation, the boy in the mean time remaining in the house, and another
person along with him. We could have wished that M. Deslon had not
been present at the subsequent part of the experiment, but he declared
that he could not answer for its success, if he did not direct his
cane and his countenance towards the tree, in order to augment the
action of the magnetism. It was therefore resolved, that M. Deslon
should be placed at the greatest possible distance, and that some of
the commissioners should stand between him and the boy, in order to
ascertain the impracticability of any signals being made by M. Deslon,
or any intelligence being maintained between them. These precautions
in an experiment the essence of which must be authenticity, are
indispensible, without giving the person with respect to whom they are
employed a right to think himself offended.
The boy was then brought into the orchard his eyes covered with the
bandage, presented successively to four trees upon which the operation
had not been performed, and caused to embrace each of them for the
space of two minutes, the mode of communication which had been
prescribed by M. Deslon himself.
M. Deslon, present, and at a considerable distance, directed his cane
towards the tree which had been the object of his operations.
At the first tree the boy being interrogated at the end of a minute,
declared that he perspired in large drops; he coughed, spit, and
complained of a slight pain in his head; the distance of the tree which
had been magnetised was about twenty seven feet.
At the second tree he felt the sensations of stupefaction and pain in
his head; the distance was thirty six feet.
At the third tree the stupefaction and head-ach increased considerably;
he said that he believed he was approaching to the tree which had been
magnetised; the distance was then about thirty eight feet.
In fine at the fourth tree which had not been rendered the object of
the operation, and at the distance of about twenty four feet from the
tree which had, the boy fell into a crisis; he fainted away, his limbs
stiffened, and he was carried to a neighbouring grass-plot, where M.
Deslon hastened to his assistance and recovered him.
The result of this experiment is entirely contrary to the theory of
the animal magnetism. M. Deslon accounted for it by observing, that
all the trees by their very nature, participated of the magnetism,
and that their magnetism was beside reinforced by his presence. But
in that case a person sensible to the power of the magnetism, could
not hazard a walk in a garden without the risk of convulsions; an
assertion confuted by the experience of every day. The presence of M.
Deslon had no greater influence here, than in the coach, in which the
boy came along with him, was placed opposite to him, and felt nothing.
If he had experienced no sensation even under the tree which was
magnetised, it might have been said that at least upon that day he
had not been sufficiently susceptible: but the boy fell into a crisis
under a tree which was not magnetised; the crisis was therefore the
effect of no physical or exterior cause, but is to be ascribed solely
to the influence of imagination. The experiment is therefore entirely
conclusive: the boy knew that he was about to be led to a tree upon
which the magnetical operation had been performed, his imagination was
struck, it was exalted by the successive steps of the experiment, and
at the fourth tree it was raised to the height necessary to produce the
crisis.
Other experiments were made calculated to support this, and the result
was the same. One day when the commissioners were all together at Passy
at the house of Dr. Franklin, and M. Deslon with them, they previously
intreated the latter to bring some of his patients with him, selecting
those of the lower class, who were most susceptible to the magnetism.
M. Deslon brought two women; and while he was employed in performing
the operation upon Dr. Franklin and several persons in another
apartment, the two women were separated, and placed in different rooms.
One of them, dame P----, had films over her eyes; but as she could
always see a little, the bandage already described was employed. She
was persuaded that M. Deslon had been brought into the room to perform
the magnetical operation; silence was recommended; three commissioners
were present, one to interrogate, another to make minutes of the
transaction, and the third to personate M. Deslon. The conversation was
pretended to be addressed to M. Deslon; he was desired to begin the
operation; the three commissioners in the mean time remained perfectly
quiet and solely occupied in observing her symptoms. At the end of
three minutes the patient began to feel a nervous shuddering; she
had then successively a pain in the back of her head, in her arms, a
creeping in her hands, that was her expression, she grew stiff, struck
her hands violently together, rose from her seat, stamped with her
feet: the crisis had all the regular symptoms. Two other commissioners,
who were in the adjoining room with the door shut, heard the stamping
of the feet and the clapping of the hands, and without seeing any thing
were witnesses to this noisy experiment.
The two commissioners we have mentioned were with the other patient,
mademoiselle B----, who was subject to nervous distempers. No bandage
was employed upon her, but her eyes were at liberty; she was seated
with her face towards a door which was shut, and persuaded that M.
Deslon was on the other side, employed in performing upon her the
magnetical operation. This had scarcely taken place a minute, before
she began to feel the symptom of shuddering; in another minute she had
a chattering of the teeth and an universal heat; in fine in the third
minute she fell into a regular crisis. Her respiration was quick, she
stretched out both her arms behind her back, twisting them extremely,
and bending her body forward: her whole body trembled; the chattering
of her teeth became so loud that it might be heard in the open air; she
bit her hand, and that with so much force, that the marks of the teeth
remained perfectly visible.
It is proper to observe that neither of these subjects were touched
in any manner; their pulse was not even felt, that it might not be
possible to say that the magnetic fluid was communicated; the crises
however were complete. The commissioners, who had been desirous to know
the effect of the influence of the imagination, and to appreciate the
share it might have in the magnetical crises, had now obtained all that
they desired. It is impossible to see this influence displayed in a
clearer or more incontrovertible manner than in these two experiments.
If the subjects have declared that their crises were stronger in the
public treatment, it must be ascribed to the power of communication
possessed by the numerous emotions, and that in general every
individual symptom has been increased by the contemplation of similar
symptoms.
We had occasion to try a second experiment upon dame P----, and to
experience how much she was under the dominion of her imagination. The
experiment of the magnetic bason was proposed: this experiment consists
in discovering among a number of basons one that has been magnetised.
They are successively presented to a patient susceptible to the
magnetism; he ought to fall into a crisis, or at least to experience
sensible effects, when the magnetic bason is presented to him, he ought
to be perfectly indifferent to all the rest. All that was necessary
according to the recommendation of M. Deslon, was to present them to
him in the direction of the poles, in order that he who presents the
bason may not himself magnetise the patient, and that there may be no
other effect than that of the magnetism of the bason itself.
Dame P---- was sent for to the arsenal to the house of M. Lavoisier,
where M. Deslon was; she began with falling into a crisis in the
anti-chamber, before she had seen either the commissioners or M.
Deslon, and merely from the knowledge she had that she was about to
see him; a distinguished effect of the influence of imagination.
When she had been tolerably recovered, she was led into the room
destined for the experiment. Several china basons were presented to
her which had not been magnetised; at the second bason she began to
feel the usual symptoms, and at the fourth fell into a complete crisis.
It may be objected that her actual state was a state of crisis, that
it had begun in the anti-chamber, and was renewed by its own single
energy; but a circumstance which is decisive, is that having asked for
something to drink, the bason which had been magnetised by M. Deslon
himself was presented to her; she drank with perfect calmness and said
that she felt herself much better. The bason and the magnetism had
therefore failed of their effect, since the crisis was tranquilized in
the room of being augmented.
Some time after, while M. Majault examined the films she had over
her eyes, the magnetic bason was presented to the back of her head,
and continued there for twelve minutes; she was unconscious of the
operation and felt no effect from it; she had even at no time been more
tranquil, because her imagination was diverted, and fixed upon the
examination that was making into the disorder of her eyes.
The commissioners were informed that while this woman had been left
alone in the anti-chamber, different persons unacquainted with the
animal magnetism had approached her, and the convulsive emotions had
recommenced. She was desired to observe that the magnetical operation
was not performed upon her; but her imagination was struck to such a
degree that she replied: If you did nothing to me, I should not be in
the condition in which I am. She knew that she had been sent for in
order to be made the subject of the experiments; and the approach of
any person towards her, or the slighted noise attracted her attention,
excited the idea of the magnetism and renewed her convulsions.
The imagination, in order to its acting with considerable strength,
has often need that you should touch several cords at a time. It has
a correspondence with each of the senses; and its reaction may be
expected to be in proportion, both to the number of senses applied
to, and of sensations received: the commissioners were led to this
observation by the following experiment. M. Jumelin had spoken to them
of a young lady, twenty years of age, whom he had deprived of the
faculty of speech by the influence of the magnetism; the commissioners
repeated the experiment at his house, the young lady consented to
submit to it, and to suffer herself to be blindfolded.
The first object of the experiment was to endeavour to obtain the same
effect without performing the operation; but, though in this situation
she felt or believed she felt the effects of the magnetism, we were not
able to strike her imagination, with the force that was necessary for
the success of the experiment. The operation was then really performed,
the bandage not being removed; and the success was the same. The
bandage was then taken away; her imagination was now attacked at once
through the different channels of sight and hearing, and the effects
were more considerable; but though she complained of a heaviness in
her head, an obstruction in the superior part of the nostrils, and a
number of the symptoms which she had felt under the operation of M.
Jumelin, she did not lose the faculty of speech. She observed herself,
that the hand by which she was magnetised in the forehead, ought to
descend to the level of the nose, recollecting that that was its
situation at the time in which she had felt the loss of her voice. What
she demanded was accordingly performed, and in three quarters of a
minute she was dumb; nothing was now to be heard from her but low and
inarticulate sounds, though the exertion of the muscles of the throat
for the formation of sound, and that of the tongue and the lips in
order to articulation were visible. This state lasted only a minute:
it is obvious to observe that, finding herself precisely in the same
circumstances, the seduction of the understanding and the effect of
that seduction upon the organs of speech were the same. But it was not
enough that she should be expressly informed that she was magnetised,
it was also necessary that the sense of seeing should yield her a
testimony, stronger, and capable of greater effects; it was necessary
that a gesture with which she was already acquainted should re-excite
her former ideas. It should seem that this experiment is admirably
calculated to display the manner in which the imagination acts, the
degrees by which it is exalted, and the different exterior succours it
requires in order to its displaying itself in its greatest energy.
The power, which the sense of sight exercises over the imagination,
explains the effects attributed by the doctrine of the magnetism to the
eyes. The eyes possess in an eminent degree the power of magnetising;
signs and gestures, as the commissioners were informed, have commonly
no effect, except upon a subject who has been previously mastered by
the employment of the eyes. The reason of this is very simple; it is
the eyes that convey the most energetic expressions of passion, it
is in them that is developed all that the human character has of the
commanding or the attractive. It is natural therefore that the eyes
should be the source of a very high degree of power; but this power
consists merely in the aptitude they possess of moving the imagination,
and that in a degree more or less strong in proportion to the activity
of the imagination. It is for this reason, that the whole process
of the magnetism commences from the eyes of the operator; and their
influence is so powerful and leaves traces so strong and lively, that
a woman, newly arrived at the house of M. Deslon, having encountered a
look of one of his pupils, who had performed the operation upon her,
just as she was recovering from a crisis, had her eyes set in her
head for three quarters of an hour. For a long time she was haunted
with the remembrance of this look; she always saw before her this
very eye fixed to regard her; and she bore it uninterruptedly in her
imagination sleeping as well as waking for three days. We see from this
instance what an imagination is capable of doing, that can preserve
one impression for so long a time, that is, can renew, of itself,
and by its single power, the same sensation regularly and without
interruption, for three days.
The experiments, which we have already reported, are uniform in their
nature, and contribute alike to the same decision; they authorise us
to conclude that the imagination is the true cause of the effects
attributed to the magnetism. But the partisans of this new agent will
perhaps reply, that the identity of effects does not always prove an
identity of causes. They will grant that the imagination is capable
of exciting these impressions without the magnetism: but they will
maintain that the magnetism is also capable of exciting them without
the imagination. The commissioners might easily destroy this assertion
by applying the principles of all reasoning, and the laws of natural
philosophy: of which the first, is to admit no new causes without an
absolute necessity. When the effects observed are capable of having
been produced by a known cause, and a cause whose existence other
phenomena have already established, found philosophy teaches that the
effects ought to be ascribed to that cause; and when on the other hand
we are acquainted with the discovery of a cause hitherto unknown,
found philosophy requires that its exigence be made out by effects,
which do not belong to a known cause, and which cannot be explained but
by the new cause. It therefore properly belongs to the partisans of the
magnetism, to bring forward other proofs, and to discover effects which
shall be entirely stripped of the illusions of the imagination. But as
facts are more demonstrative than reasonings, and as their evidence
is more universally striking, the commissioners have been desirous of
establishing by experiment, what the magnetism could do in cases where
the imagination had no concern.
For this experiment they made choice of two rooms, contiguous to each
other, and united by a door of communication. The door was taken away,
and a frame of wood substituted in its place, with transverse bars,
and covered with a double texture of paper. In one of these rooms was
a commissioner, who undertook to make minutes of the transaction, and
a lady, who was given out to be just arrived from the country, and to
have a suit of linen, which she wanted to have made up. Mademoiselle
B----, a sempstress by profession, who had been already employed in
the experiments at Passy, and whose sensibility to the magnetism was
well known, was sent for. Every thing was arranged against her arrival
in such a manner, that there was but one seat upon which she could
place herself, and that seat stood within the frame of the door of
communication.
The commissioners were in the other apartment, and one of them, a
physician, who had upon former occasions performed the magnetical
operation with success, had undertaken to magnetise mademoiselle
B---- through the paper partition. It is a principle in the theory
of the magnetism that this agent passes through doors, walls, &c. A
partition of paper could therefore be no obstacle; beside M. Deslon had
positively declared that the magnetism passes through paper.
Mademoiselle B---- was accordingly magnetised during half an hour, at
the distance of a foot and an half, and in a direction opposite to that
of the poles, in conformity to the rules taught by M. Deslon, and which
the commissioners had seen practised at his house. During the operation
she conversed with much gaiety, and, in answer to an enquiry concerning
her health, she readily replied, that she was perfectly well: at Passy
she had fallen into a crisis in the course of three minutes; in the
present instance she underwent the operation of the magnetism without
any effect for thirty minutes. The only reason of this difference
must be that here she was ignorant of the operation, and that at Passy
she thought it had been performed. The inevitable conclusion is, that
the imagination singly produces all the effects attributed to the
magnetism, and that, where the imagination ceases to be called forth,
it has no longer the smallest efficacy.
Only one objection can be suggested to this experiment; it is that
mademoiselle B---- might not be prepared to receive the magnetic
fluid, and might be less susceptible to its operation than usual. The
commissioners foresaw this objection, and for that reason made the
following experiment. As soon as they had ceased to magnetise the
patient through the paper partition, the same commissioner passed into
the other apartment; he found no difficulty in engaging mademoiselle
B---- to submit to the magnetical operation. It was accordingly
repeated in precisely the same manner as in the former instance, at the
distance of a foot and an half, and by the intervention of gestures
only, together with the employment of the right finger and the rod
of iron. If he had applied the hands, and touched the hypochonders,
it might have been objected that any difference of effect, was to be
ascribed to the application having been more immediate in the latter
instance. But the only difference between the two experiments was, that
in the former mademoiselle B---- was magnetised in a direction opposite
to that of the poles, and conformable to the rules of the magnetical
theory; and in the second she was magnetised in the direction of the
poles, or in the transverse line. On this account according to the
principles of the magnetism no effect ought to have been produced.
In three minutes however she felt a sensation of dejection and
suffocation; to these succeeded an interrupted hiccup, a chattering
of the teeth, a contraction of the throat, and an extreme pain in her
head; she was restless in her chair; she complained of a pain in the
loins; now and then she struck her foot with extreme quickness on the
floor; afterwards she stretched her arms behind her, twisting them
extremely as at Passy; in a word the convulsive crisis was complete and
accompanied with all the regular symptoms. All these accidents appeared
in consequence of a process of twelve minutes, though the same process
employed for thirty minutes a little before had been ineffectual. The
only ground of difference that remains, is the play that was afforded
in the latter instance to the imagination; to this therefore the
difference of the effects is to be ascribed.
If the crisis originated in the influence of the imagination, it was
the imagination also that put a stop to it. The commissioner who
magnetised her, observed that it was time to have done; at the same
time presenting to her his two forefingers in the form of a cross;
and it is proper to observe that in so doing he magnetised her in the
direction of the poles, in the same manner as he had done through
the whole experiment; no actual alteration had therefore been made,
and the process being continued, the impressions ought also to have
continued. But the declared intention of the operator was sufficient
to dissipate the crisis; her heat and the pain in her head were
immediately alleviated. The disorder of her frame was in this manner
followed from place to place, announcing at the same time that it was
going to disappear. In this manner in obedience to the voice to which
the imagination was subjected, the contraction of the throat ceased,
then the accidents of the breast, lastly those of the stomach and the
arms. The whole required only three minutes; after which mademoiselle
B---- declared that she no longer felt any sensation, but was perfectly
restored to her habitual state.
These last experiments, as well as several of those that were made at
the house of M. Jumelin, have the double advantage of demonstrating
at once the efficacy of the imagination, and the impotence of the
magnetism, in regard of the symptoms which were operated.
If the symptoms are more considerable and the crises more violent at
the public process, it is because various causes are combined with the
imagination, to operate, to multiply and to enlarge its effects. They
begin with subduing the minds of the patients by the employment of the
eyes; this is followed by the touch, the application of the hands; it
is proper to develop in this place the physical effects of this method
of procedure.
The symptoms are more or less considerable: the less are hiccuppings,
qualms of the stomach and purgings; the greater are the convulsions to
which they have given the denomination of crises. The parts upon which
the touch is employed, are the hypochonders, the pit of the stomach,
and sometimes the ovaria, when the patient is a woman. The hands and
the fingers are pressed with a greater or less stress upon these
different regions.
The colon, one of the larger intestines, runs through both the regions
of the hypochonders, and the region of the epigastrium which separates
them. It is placed immediately under the integuments. It is therefore
upon this intestine that the pressure falls, an intestine full of
sensibility and irritability. A repeated voluntary effort, without
assistance from any other cause, excites the muscular action of this
intestine, and sometimes procures evacuations. Nature, as it were
by instinct, indicates this manœuvre to persons hypochondriacally
affected. The process of the magnetism is nothing more than this very
manœuvre; and the evacuations it is calculated to produce are further
facilitated in the magnetical process, by the frequent and almost
habitual use of a real laxative, the cream of tartar in their drink.
But while the motion which is produced, excites principally the
irritability of the colon, this intestine offers other phenomena. It
swells in a greater or less degree, and sometimes distends itself to
a considerable volume. At such times it communicates to the diaphragm
such an irritation, that this organ becomes more or less convulsed.
It is this convulsion to which they have given the appellation of
crisis in the animal magnetism. One of the commissioners had occasion
to see a woman, subject to a kind of spasmodic vomitings, with which
she was seized several times in the course of every day. Her efforts
produced nothing but a turbid and viscous water, similar to that
which is brought up by the patients in the crisis of the magnetical
operation. The convulsion had its seat in the diaphragm, and the
region of the colon was so sensible, that the slightest touch upon
that part, a strong commotion of the air, the surprise caused by
a sudden noise sufficed to excite the convulsion. This woman had
therefore regular crises without the assistance of the magnetism, by
the single irritability of the colon and diaphragm; and the women who
are magnetised, obtain their crises from the same cause and through the
same irritability.
The application of the hands upon the stomach has physical effects not
less remarkable. The application is made directly upon that organ.
Sometimes a strong continuous compression is operated, sometimes a
number of slight and successive compressions, sometimes a discomposure
of the stomach by a rotatory motion of the rod of iron in contact
with the part, or by the successive and rapid passage of the thumbs
over it one after the other. These methods convey almost immediately
to the stomach an irritation, more or less strong and durable, in
proportion as the subject is more or less susceptible. The part is
also previously disposed for the reception of this irritation by
being first compressed. This compression prepares it to act upon the
diaphragm and to communicate to it the impressions it receives. It is
irritated, the diaphragm is also irritated, and from thence result, in
the same manner as by the action of the colon, the nervous accidents
which had been already stated. In women who are peculiarly susceptible,
the mere compression of the two hypochonders, without their being acted
upon in any other manner, occasions a contraction of the stomach and
fits of swooning. This happened in the case of the woman magnetised by
M. Jumelin, and it often happens from no other cause than an improper
degree of tightness in their dress. These cases are not followed by the
crisis, because the stomach is compressed, without being irritated, and
the diaphragm remains in its natural state. The same methods employed
upon the ovaria in the female sex, beside their particular effects,
produce with great force the above accidents. The empire and extensive
influence of the uterus over the animal œconomy is well known.
The intimate connection of the colon, the stomach and the uterus with
the diaphragm is one of the causes of the effects ascribed to the
magnetism. The regions of the lower belly, which are the subject of
these operations, answer to the different plexuses which constitute a
regular nervous centre in this part, by means of which, leaving every
particular system out of the question, there most certainly exists a
sympathy, communication or correspondence between all the parts of the
body, such an action and reaction, that the sensations excited in this
centre affect the other parts of the body, and reciprocally a sensation
experienced in any part affects and calls into play the nervous centre,
which often transmits the impression back again to all the parts of the
body.
The truth thus stated not only explains the effects of the magnetic
touch, but also the physical effects of the imagination. It has been
constantly remarked, that the affections of the soul make their first
corporeal impression upon the nervous centre, which commonly leads
their subject to describe himself as having a weight upon his stomach,
or a sensation of suffocation. The diaphragm enters into this business,
from whence originate the sighs, the tears and the expressions of
mirth. The viscera of the lower belly then experience a reaction; and
it is by this automatous process that we are enabled to account for the
physical disorders produced by the imagination. Surprise occasions the
colic, terror causes a diarrhœa, melancholy is the origin of icterical
distempers. The history of medicine presents to us an infinity of
examples of the power of imagination and the mental affections. The
terror occasioned by a fire, a violent degree of desire, a strong and
undoubting hope, a fit of choler have restored the use of his limbs
to one who has been crippled with the gout or to a paralytic person;
a strong and unlooked for degree of joy has dissipated a quartan
ague of two months standing; close attention is a remedy for the
hiccup; and persons, who by some accident have been deprived of the
faculty of speech, have recovered it in consequence of some of the
vehement emotions of the soul. This last assertion is supported by the
testimony of history, and the commissioners have themselves witnessed
a suspension of this faculty, occasioned singly by the imagination.
The action and reaction of the physical upon the moral system, and of
the moral upon the physical, have been acknowledged ever since the
phenomena of the medical science have been remarked, that is, ever
since the origin of the science.
Tears, laughter, coughs, hiccups, and in general all the effects which
are observed in what have been stiled crises in the animal magnetism,
do therefore originate either in the interruption of the functions
of the diaphragm by a physical vehicle, such as the touch and the
pressure, or from the power with which the imagination is endowed of
acting upon this organ and interrupting its functions.
If it be objected that the touch is not always necessary to these
effects, it may be replied, that the imagination may be sufficiently
fertile in resources to produce them all by its sole instrumentality;
especially the imagination exerted in a public process, called into
play at once by the methods in which it is itself addressed, and by the
effects observed in those who surround it. It has been already seen
what were its effects in the experiments made by the commissioners
upon isolated subjects; it may easily be conceived in what degree
those effects must be multiplied in the case of a number of patients
collected together in a public process. These patients are assembled in
a narrow space, if the space be compared with the number of patients;
the air of the apartment is heated, although care be employed to renew
it; and it is always more or less impregnated with mephitic gas, which
has the property of acting immediately upon the head and the nervous
system. When the introduction of music is added, it affords another
means of acting upon and exciting the nerves.
In the public process several women are magnetised at the same time,
and they experience at first no effects but such as are similar to
those, obtained by the commissioners in various experiments. It is even
acknowledged that for the most part the crises do not commence in less
than the space of two hours. By little and little the impressions are
communicated from one to another, and reinforced, in the same manner as
the impressions which are made by theatrical representation, where the
impressions are greater in proportion to the number of the spectators,
and the liberty they enjoy of expressing their sensations. The
applause, by which the emotions of individuals are announced, occasions
a general emotion, which every one partakes in the degree in which he
is susceptible. The same observation has been made in armies upon a day
of battle, where the enthusiasm of courage, as well as the impressions
of terror, are propagated with so amazing rapidity. The drum, the sound
of the military musical instruments, the noise of the cannon, the
musquetry, the shouts of the army, and the general disorder impress the
organs, have a uniform effect upon the understanding, and exalt the
imagination in the same degree. In this equilibrium of inebriation,
the external manifestation of a single sensation immediately becomes
universal; it hurries the soldiery to the charge, or it determines them
to fly. The same cause is deeply concerned in rebellions; the multitude
are governed by the imagination; the individuals in a numerous assembly
are more subjected to their senses, and less capable of submitting to
the dictates of reason; and where fanaticism is the presiding quality,
its fruit is the tremblers of the Cevennes[12]. It has been usual to
forbid numerous assemblies in seditious towns, as a means of stopping
a contagion so easily communicated. Every where example acts upon
the moral part of our frame, mechanical imitation upon the physical
part: the minds of individuals are calmed by dispersing them; the same
method puts a stop to their spasmodic affections, always contagious in
their nature: we have had a recent example of this in the young ladies
of Saint Roch, who were in this manner cured of the convulsions with
which they were affected when together[13].
The magnetism then, or rather the operations of the imagination,
are equally discoverable at the theatre, in the camp, and in all
numerous assemblies, as at the bucket, acting indeed by different
means, but producing similar effects. The bucket is surrounded with
a crowd of patients; the sensations are continually communicated and
recommunicated; it ought to be expected that the nerves should be at
length worn out with this exercise, they are accordingly irritated,
and the woman of most sensibility in the company gives the signal.
Immediately the cords, every where stretched to the same degree and
in perfect unison, respond to each other; the crises are multiplied;
they mutually reinforce each other, and are rendered violent. In the
mean time the men, who are witnesses of these emotions, partake of them
in proportion to their nervous sensibility; and those with whom this
sensibility is greatest and most easily excited become themselves the
subjects of a crisis.
This propensity to irritation, partly natural and partly acquired,
becomes in each sex habitual. The sensations having been felt once or
oftener, nothing is now necessary, but to recal the memory of them, and
to exalt the imagination to the same degree, in order to operate the
same effects. This will never be difficult when the subject is placed
in the same circumstances. The public process is no longer necessary,
you have only to touch the hypochonders and to conduct the finger and
the rod of iron before the countenance; the signs are well known.
Even these are not necessary, it is sufficient that the patients be
blindfolded, made to believe that these signs are repeated upon them,
and that they are magnetised; the ideas are reexcited, the sensations
are reproduced, the imagination, employing its accustomed instruments
and resuming its former routes, gives birth to the same phenomena.
These cases happen exactly to the patients of M. Deslon, who fall
into a crisis without the bucket, and without being excited with the
spectacle of the public process.
Compression, imagination, imitation are therefore the true causes of
the effects attributed to this new agent, known by the appellation
of animal magnetism, this fluid, which is said to circulate through
the human body, and to be communicated from individual to individual.
Such is the result of the experiments of the commissioners, and
the observations they made upon the means employed and the effects
produced. This agent, this fluid has no existence. Chimerical however
as it is, the idea is by no means novel. Some authors, particularly
physicians of the last age, have expressly treated of it in various
performances. The curious and interesting enquiries of M. Thouret have
convinced the public, that the theory, the operations and the effects
of the animal magnetism, proposed in the last age, were nearly the same
with those revived in the present. The magnetism then is no more than
an old falshood. The theory indeed is now presented, as was necessary
in a more enlightened age, with a greater degree of pomp; but it is
not less erroneous. Human nature is formed to seize, to quit and to
resume the mistake which is flattering to its wishes. There are errors
which will be eternally dear to the sublunary state. How often has the
pretended science of astrology vanished and reappeared! The magnetism
is calculated to lead us back to it. Its professors have been desirous
of connecting it with the celestial influences, that it might have
the stronger seduction, and attract mankind by the two hopes that
are nearest their heart, that of looking into futurity, and that of
prolonging their existence.
There is room to believe that the imagination is the principal of the
three causes which we have assigned to the magnetism. It appears by
the experiments we have related that it suffices alone to produce the
crises. The pressure and the touch seem to serve it as preparatives;
it is by the touch that the nerves begin to be excited, imitation
communicates and extends the impressions. But the imagination is that
active and terrible power, by which are operated the astonishing
effects, that have excited so much attention to the public process. The
effects strike all the world, the cause is enveloped in the shades
of obscurity. When we consider that these effects seduced in former
ages men, venerable for their merit, their illumination and even their
genius, Paracelsus, Van Helmont and Kircher, we cease to be astonished,
that persons of the present day, learned and well informed, that even
a great number of physicians have been the dupes of this system. Had
the commissioners been admitted only to the public process, where there
is neither time nor opportunity of making decisive experiments, they
might themselves have been led into error. It was necessary to have
liberty to insulate the effects, in order to distinguish the causes; it
was necessary to see as they have done the imagination act, if we may
be allowed the expression, partially, and produce its effects one by
one and in detail, to have an idea to what the accumulation of those
effects might amount; to conceive the extent of its power, and to
account for all its prodigies. Such an examination demanded a sacrifice
of time, and a number of systematical researches, which we have not
always the leisure to undertake for our private instruction or private
curiosity, nor even the power properly to pursue without being like the
commissioners charged with the mandates of the sovereign, and honoured
with the confidence of the public.
M. Deslon is not much averse to the admission of these principles.
He declared in our session held at the house of Dr. Franklin the
19th of June, that he thought he might lay it down as a fact, that
the imagination had the greatest share in the effects of the animal
magnetism; he said that this new agent might be no other than the
imagination itself, whose power is as extensive as it is little known:
he affirmed that he always acknowledged the concern of this faculty in
the treatment of his patients, and he affirmed with equal confidence
that many persons have been either entirely cured or infinitely
amended in the state of their health under his direction. He remarked
to the commissioners that the imagination thus directed to the relief
of suffering humanity, would be a most valuable means in the hands
of the medical profession[14]; and persuaded of the reality of the
power of the imagination, he invited the commissioners to embrace the
opportunity which his practice afforded to study its procedure and
its effects. If therefore M. Deslon be still attached to his first
idea, that these effects are to be ascribed to the agency of a fluid,
which is communicated from individual to individual by the touch or
under the guidance of a conductor, he cannot however avoid conceding
to the commissioners that only one cause is requisite to one effect,
and that since the imagination is a sufficient cause, the supposition
of the magnetic fluid is useless. It cannot be denied that we are
surrounded with a fluid which peculiarly belongs to us; the insensible
perspiration forms around us an atmosphere of insensible vapours: but
this fluid has no agency but such as is common to other atmospheres;
cannot be communicated by the touch but in infinitely small quantities;
is not capable of being directed either by conductors, or by the eyes,
or by the will; is neither propagated by sound, nor reflected by
mirrors; and is in no case susceptible of the effects ascribed to it.
It remains for us to enquire, whether the crises or convulsions,
excited by the methods of the pretended magnetism in the assemblies
round the bucket, be capable of any utility, or be calculated to
cure or relieve the patients. The imagination of sick persons has
unquestionably a very frequent and considerable share in the cure of
their diseases. With the effect of it we are unacquainted otherwise
than by general experience; but, though it has not been traced in
positive experiments, it should seem not to admit of a reasonable
doubt. It is a known adage, that in physic as well as religion, men
are saved by faith; this faith is the produce of the imagination: in
these cases the imagination acts by gentle means; it is by diffusing
tranquility over the senses, by restoring the harmony of the functions,
by recalling into play every principle of the frame under the genial
influence of hope. Hope is an essential constituent of human life; the
man that yields us one contributes to restore to us the other. But when
the imagination produces convulsions, the means it employs are violent;
and such means are almost always destructive. There are indeed a few
rare cases in which they may be useful; there are desperate diseases,
in which it is necessary to overturn every thing for the introduction
of an order totally new. These critical shocks are to be employed in
the medical art in the same manner as poisons. It is requisite that
necessity should demand, and œconomy employ them. The need of them
is momentary; the shock ought to be single. Very far from repeating
it, the intelligent physician exerts himself to invent the means of
repairing the indispensible evil which has thus been produced; but
in the public process of the magnetism the crises are repeated every
day, they are long and violent. Now since the state introduced by
these crises is pernicious, the habit cannot be other than fatal. How
indeed can it be conceived, that a woman, attacked for instance with
a pulmonary distemper, can undergo with impunity a crisis, some of
whose symptoms are a convulsive cough and compulsory expectorations; or
can safely fatigue, perhaps shatter the lungs by violent and repeated
efforts, when so great pains are necessary to convey to the wounded
frame the sanative and the balsamic? How can we imagine that a man,
be his disorder what it will, can need in order to his recovery the
intervention of crises, in which the sight appears to be lost, the
members stiffen, he strikes his breast with precipitate and involuntary
motions; crises in a word, that are terminated by an abundant spitting
of viscous humours and even blood? The blood thus discharged is neither
vitiated nor corrupted, it flows from vessels from which it is torn by
the violence of effort and contrary to the intention of nature; these
effects are therefore to be regarded as a real not a salutary evil, an
evil additional to the distemper be it what it will.
Nor is this the only danger with which they are attended. Man is
incessantly enslaved by custom; nature is modified by habit only in
a progressive manner, yet she is often so completely modified, as to
suffer an entire metamorphosis, and to be scarcely capable of being
known for the same. Who will assure us that this state of crises, at
first voluntarily induced, shall not become habitual? And should the
habit thus contracted frequently reproduce the same symptoms, in spite
of the will, and almost without the assistance of the imagination, how
dreadful the fate of an individual, subjected to so violent effects,
tormented, as well morally as physically, with their unfortunate
impression, whose days should be divided between apprehension and
agony, and whose life should be an uninterrupted state of suffering!
Nervous distempers of this description, even when natural, are the
opprobrium of the medical science; how little ought it to be the
object of art to produce them! The art, which thus interferes with all
the functions of the animal œconomy, urges nature out of her proper
course, and multiplies the victims of irregularity, is to be regarded
as pernicious. Its effects are the more to be apprehended, since
it not only aggravates the disorder of the nerves by renewing their
symptoms, and causing them to degenerate into habit; but if a distemper
of this kind be contagious, as it may be suspected to be, the method of
provoking nervous convulsions and of exciting them in public assemblies
is a means to diffuse them in great towns, and even to afflict with
them generations to come, since the diseases and the habits of parents
are transmitted to their posterity.
The commissioners having convinced themselves, that the animal magnetic
fluid is capable of being perceived by none of our senses, and had no
action either upon themselves or upon the subjects of their several
experiments; being assured, that the touches and compressions employed
in its application rarely occasioned favourable changes in the animal
œconomy, and that the impressions thus made are always hurtful to the
imagination; in fine having demonstrated by decisive experiments,
that the imagination without the magnetism produces convulsions, and
that the magnetism without the imagination produces nothing; they
have concluded with an unanimous voice respecting the existence and
the utility of the magnetism, that the existence of the fluid is
absolutely destitute of proof, that the fluid having no existence
can consequently have no use, that the violent symptoms observed in
the public process are to be ascribed to the compression, to the
imagination called into action, and to that propensity to mechanical
imitation, which leads us in spite of ourselves to the repetition of
what strikes our senses. And at the same time they think themselves
obliged to add as an important observation, that the compressions and
the repeated action of the imagination employed in producing the crises
may be hurtful, that the sight of these crises is not less dangerous on
account of that imitation which nature seems to have imposed upon us as
a law, and that of consequence every public process, in which the means
of the animal magnetism shall be employed, cannot fail in the end of
producing the most pernicious effects[15].
Paris, the 11th day of August, 1784.
(Signed) B. FRANKLIN,
MAJAULT,
LE ROY,
SALLIN,
BAILLY,
D’ARCET,
DE BORY,
GUILLOTIN,
LAVOISIER.
FINIS.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “It must be confessed however, that the manner of directing the
pretended magnetism, is different in these systems. The ancients, as
well as M. Mesmer, regarded this fluid as universally diffused, as
pervading the bodies of animals, and as capable of being rendered the
vehicle of the most salutary influences. But, in order to call it into
action, they did not, like M. Mesmer, desire to touch, or so much as
to approach the patient. Their method consisted in a different order
of proceeding. To give a suitable direction to the universal spirit,
they were obliged to employ real parts, either extracted or evacuated,
of the individual upon whom they proposed to direct the magnetism. The
different humours of the human body, whether natural, as the blood,
the urine, the excrements, or contrary to nature, as the pus bred in
wounds; in fine, the solid parts of the frame, as the flesh, the nails,
the hair, in a state of separation from the body, afforded, according
to the ancient doctrine, the suitable and necessary means of employing
the magnetism. These different parts, so long as they remained in a
state of integrity, were supposed to be united in the link of a common
vital principle with the individual who had furnished them. The union
was operated by the intervention of the universal spirit, and in
acting upon them, the physician was said to act also upon the person
to whom they had belonged; an action, which, as it was independent of
contact, and was not superseded by distance, was regarded as magnetic.”
_Thouret._
[2] “Far be it from me,” says Maxwel, “to lead you to improper
actions. If from the perusal of my works, you become acquainted
with the means of such actions, you will do me the justice not to
divulge them.--I have seen,” adds he, “the most incredible effects,
and the greatest advantages from a right use of this method. I have
also seen infinite evils occasioned by the abuse of it.--Indeed, it
is scarcely prudent to treat of these subjects, on account of the
dangers that may result from it. If we were to express ourselves in a
manner universally intelligible, fathers could never be sure of their
daughters, nor husbands of their wives; women would be deprived of
their self-government in spite of the most judicious and obstinate
resistance.” _Maxwel, de medicina magnetica, apud Thouret._
[3] Paracelsus Arecolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus de Hohenheim
is to be regarded as the inventor of the magnetical system. He was born
at a village near Zurich in Switzerland in 1493, and died in 1541. His
profession was that of a physician, and he obtained great reputation
by the use of mercury and opium, medicines that were unknown, or not
employed by the physicians of those times. But beside this, he was a
proficient in alchymy, astrology, and magic. He was acquainted with the
philosopher’s stone, and the universal medicine. And he invented an
elixir, in the use of which a man could not fail to live to the age of
a thousand years.
Van Helmont was the immediate successor of Paracelsus in the pursuit
of the magnetical science, and wrote an express treatise De Magnetica
Vulnerum Curatione.
All the other persons enumerated, lived in the seventeenth century.
“To Maxwel, we are particularly indebted for the most complete and
copious treatise upon the subject, in which he has endeavoured to
support its declining credit by calling in the assistance of that
theory of the universal spirit, which he derived from the earliest
philosophers of antiquity, and in which we are presented with the exact
counterpart of the system of M. Mesmer.
“Another inhabitant of this island, the learned and illustrious sir
Kenelm Digby, is well known for his invention of the sympathetic
powder; which it was only necessary to apply to the linnen which had
imbibed the blood or pus of a wound, or to the arm or sword of him who
inflicted it, provided they were still stained with the blood of the
wounded person. It was necessary however, that the wound should be kept
perfectly clean, and protected from the air.
“There was a sympathetic sweating powder, invented so lately as the
year 1745. The means of applying it was, by mixing it with the urine of
the person diseased, and keeping it boiling over a fire, as long as you
wished the perspiration to continue. During the operation, the patient
was to keep his bed, to be covered up warm, and to drink several large
basons of tea. This medicine was never known to fail of its effect.”
_Thouret._
[4] The experiments of the ring and sword, are to be found in Kircher’s
Magnes, sive de arte magnetica. They are both well known. “That of
the sword consists in the balancing it upon the point of one of the
fingers, the consequence of which will be a very rapid rotatory motion,
_provided the person be properly magnetised_. That of the ring is
performed by a person initiated in the animal magnetism, holding it
suspended by a thread in the inside of a wine glass, when it will
invariably strike the hour of the day.” _Thouret._
[5] “Valentine Greatrakes, esq; was a native of Afane, in the kingdom
of Ireland. We are told, that one day he was conscious to a wonderful
internal revolution, and at the same time heard a voice like that
of a genius, which cried incessantly for a long time: “I endow you
with the faculty of curing diseases.” Importuned by this salutation,
from which he could in no way distract his attention, he determined
to make an experiment of the truth of the intelligence. The voice
had first announced to him the gift of curing the king’s evil. He
made an experiment upon this distemper, and succeeded. He afterwards
touched persons attacked with an epidemical fever, that raged in his
neighbourhood; the voice had announced to him the gift of curing this
disease. In fine, he was enabled to cure every species of disease; and
he succeeded in all cases, except where, as he observed, the malady
was too deeply rooted, or the patient laboured under a particular
indisposition to this method of cure. The exterior of this man was
extremely simple. His cures were accompanied with no degree of pomp and
ceremony, unless we should call such, his ascribing his success to God,
publicly expressing his gratitude, and inviting the patient to join
with him in the act of thanksgiving. But he made a very extensive use
of the operation of touch. The distemper fled before him, and he was
able, we are told, to dislodge it from its seat, and remove it to parts
the least useful. If its progress appeared to be suspended in any part,
he redoubled his frictions upon that part, to remove the obstacle. In
this operation nature, excited by the stroking, seemed frequently to
operate crises, and it produced stools, vomitings and perspirations.”
_Thouret._
“Greatrakes cured not only internal diseases, but also external ones,
such as wounds and ulcers. The second Villiers, duke of Buckingham, was
one of his patients. His attestations were signed by Boyle, Wilkins,
Whichcot, Cudworth and Patrick. He was born in 1628, received the gift
of healing 1662, and removed to London 1666.” _Des Maizeaux, Vie de St.
Evremond_.
“The cures of Gassner are of a much later date, and are not above ten
or twelve years old. This German, having in his youth been afflicted
with an ill state of health, which resisted the efforts of all the
physicians, suspected that his distemper might have a supernatural
cause, and derive from the influence of the devil. His conjecture was
verified by his success in expelling the devil, having adjured him
in the name of Jesus Christ. From that moment he enjoyed the most
perfect health for sixteen years. Encouraged by this event, he laid
aside the study of medicine, to which his distemper had prompted him,
and procured all the authors who had treated of exorcism. He began
with healing his parishioners in an obscure town upon the borders
of Switzerland and the Tirol, and his reputation increased so much,
that, in the two last years of his residence there, he had between
four and five hundred patients who applied to him. He then made a
progress through several of the Swiss cantons, and settled at Ratisbon
in 1774. He distinguished diseases into two classes, the natural and
the demoniac, the last of which were much the most numerous. Over the
former he pretended to no power. His cures were performed with much
pomp and solemnity; and it was observed, that he constantly rubbed his
hands upon his girdle and handkerchief previously to his touching the
patient. He performed his cures in the name of Christ, and by the faith
of the diseased in his holy name; if their faith failed, the cure did
not take place. He gave the sick, when he dismissed them, balm and oil,
which he considered as spiritual medicaments, together with certain
waters and powders, and a little ring, inscribed with the name of
Jesus, to prevent a relapse.” _Thouret._
Thouret considers the system of Gassner as having had an influence on
that of M. Mesmer. Astrology and possessions were extremely current
in Germany; and as Gassner had taken possession of, and ruined the
latter pretension, Mesmer had recourse to the former. It should however
be remembered, that Mesmer had written and published his thesis upon
astrology before the pretensions of Gassner were heard of.
These instances are produced by Thouret, as distinguished proofs of
the efficacy both of the touch and the imagination. In proof of the
contagion of convulsive affections, he cites the convulsions of Saint
Medard, and the possessions of Loudun. “The former of these took place
in 1732, and made their appearance as soon as any of the religious
were approached to the tomb of their patron saint. They were exposed
in the most triumphant manner, and covered with ridicule by Hecquet,
in his Natural History of Convulsions. The pretended possessions of
Loudun (1740) originated in an infamous scheme of avarice and revenge
against the unfortunate Urbain Grandier, rector of Loudun, who became
the victim of the machinations of his enemies. The physicians of
Montpelier, charged with the examination of the affair, discovered the
whole secret of the possessions to consist in factitious and pretended
convulsions.” _Thouret._
[6] Memoir by M. Mesmer, upon the Discovery of the Animal Magnetism,
1779, pages 74 and following.
[7] Ibid. Advertisement, page vi.
[8] _Baquet._ The diameter of this box is usually large enough to admit
of fifty persons standing round its circumference. _Translator._
[9] The observation of this fact was laid in detail before the faculty
of medicine at Paris, in an assembly de prima mensis, by M. Bourdois de
la Mothe, physician of the charity of Saint-Sulpice, who visited the
sick person regularly every day.
[10] M. Mesmer, Historical Abridgement, pages 35, 37.
[11] M. Sigault, doctor of the faculty of Paris, well known for his
invention of the operation of the symphysis of the ossa pubis, made a
number of experiments, tending to prove that the magnetism is merely an
imaginary power. The following is the detail which he made in a letter,
dated July the 30th, 1784, and addressed to one of the commissioners.
“Having given the persons who inhabited a large house in the Marais, to
understand that I was a pupil of M. Mesmer, I produced various effects
upon the woman of the house. The magisterial tone and the serious
air I affected, together with certain gestures, made a very great
impression upon her, which she at first was desirous to conceal from
me; but having guided my hand upon the region of the heart, I felt that
it palpitated. The state of oppression in which she appeared likewise
indicated a contraction of the chest. Other symptoms were connected
with these; her face became convulsed, her eyes wandered, she at length
fell into a swoon, then threw up her dinner, had several stools, and
was reduced to a state of weakness and sinking, perfectly incredible.
I repeated the same trick upon several persons, and succeeded more or
less, according to their different degrees of sensibility and credulity.
“A celebrated artist, master of design to the children of one of
our princes, complained for several days of an extreme head-ach; he
acquainted me with it upon the Pont-royal; having persuaded him that I
was initiated in the mysteries of M. Mesmer, I expelled his head-ach
almost instantaneously by the means of a few gestures, to his great
astonishment.
“I produced the same effects upon the apprentice of a hatter in the
same distemper. The lad felt nothing in consequence of my first
gestures; I then laid my hand upon his false ribs, bidding him at the
same time look in my face. He immediately felt a contraction of the
chest, palpitations of the heart, yawnings, and an extreme dejection.
He doubted no longer of the power I possessed over him. I then guided
my finger over the part affected, and asked him what he felt. He
replied that his pain dislodged itself and descended. I assured him
that I would guide it towards his arm, and make it come out at his
thumb, at the same time squeezing it with considerable force. He took
me at my word, and was perfectly well for two hours. At that period he
stopped me in the street to tell me that his pain was returned. This
effect seems to be the same with that produced by certain dentists upon
the mental faculties of those, who go to them to have a tooth drawn.
“Further lastly, being in the parlour of a convent, rue du Colombier,
fauxbourg Saint Germains, a young lady said to me: I understand,
sir, that you are a pupil of M. Mesmer. I am so, replied I; and I
can perform the magnetical operation upon you, notwithstanding the
intervention of the grate. At the same time I presented my finger; she
was terrified, trembled extremely, and besought me for God’s sake to
proceed no farther. Her emotion was such, that, if I had persevered in
my experiment, she would infallibly have fallen into convulsions.”
M. Sigault relates that he had himself felt the power of imagination.
One day, the operator having undertaken to perform upon him the
magnetical operation to convince him of its reality, at the moment he
had determined to touch him, he felt a contraction of the chest, and a
palpitation of the heart. But having immediately composed himself, the
gestures and the process of the magnetism were employed in vain, and
made no impression upon him.
[12] Marshal Villars, who was employed in appeasing the troubles of the
Cevennes, says: “I saw things in this kind, which I should not have
believed, if they had not passed before my eyes; I saw a considerable
town, of which the whole female part without exception appeared to
be possessed by the devil. They trembled and prophesied publicly in
the streets. One had the rashness to tremble and prophesy for an
hour together in my presence. But of all these absurdities the most
surprising was that, which was related to me by the bishop of Alais,
and which I wrote to M. de Chamillard in the following terms.
“‘A M. de Mandagors, lord of the manor of that name, mayor of Alais,
possessing the first appointments in the town and county, and having
even been for some time subdelegate to M. de Bàville, was the subject
of this relation. He was sixty years of age, temperate in his manners,
possessed of a fine understanding, and had written and published many
performances. Some of them I have read, and, before I knew what I have
just learned respecting him, I considered them as distinguished by a
very vigorous imagination.
“‘A prophetess, aged twenty seven or twenty eight years, was taken up
about eighteen months ago and carried before the bishop of Alais. He
interrogated her before several ecclesiastics. The creature, after
having heard what he said, replied with a modest air, exhorted him no
longer to torment the true children of God, and then addressed him for
an entire hour in an uncouth language of which he could not understand
a word: just as we have formerly seen the duke de la Ferté, when he
had drank a few glasses, talk English before the inhabitants of that
country. I have heard them say, I understand very well that he speaks
English, but I cannot comprehend a word that he says. It would have
been somewhat difficult that they should have done so, for he never
knew a word of English in his life. This girl talked Greek and Hebrew
in the style of the duke de la Ferté.
“‘You will take it for granted that M. d’Alais sent the girl to prison.
After several months, the girl appearing to be entirely ridded of her
absurdities by the attention and advice of the sieur de Mandagors, who
frequently visited her in her confinement, she was set at liberty, and
the consequence of that liberty, and of the liberties that the sieur
Mandagors had taken with her, was an immediate pregnancy.
“‘But the fact which I was about to relate is the resignation made by
the sieur Mandagors of all his employments in favour of his son, at
the same time saying to several individuals, and among others to the
bishop, that it was by express commission from God that he had had
carnal knowledge of the prophetess, and that the child which should
be born would be the true saviour of the world. The consequence of
all this in any other country than France, would have been merely the
sending M. the mayor and his fair patroness to bedlam. The bishop
suggested to me to have him arrested. I proposed previously to confer
with M. de Bàville, intendant of the province, ordering in the mean
time that he and the prophetess should be closely watched, so that
they might not be able to escape. My opinion was, that, in the midst
of a country of madmen, what relates to a madman of such importance
ought to make as little noise as possible; and that it was therefore
necessary to endeavour to get him out of the country by gentle means,
and then to take him into custody. Your lordship will easily conceive
that to declare publicly for a prophet a mayor of Alais, the lord
of an extensive manor, an ancient subdelegate of the intendant, an
author, and a man hitherto esteemed for his penetration and sagacity,
in the midst of a country accustomed to venerate and respect him, was a
measure better calculated to revolt the minds of the inhabitants than
to correct them. It would the rather have had this tendency, that,
except the folly of believing that God had commanded him to have carnal
knowledge of this young woman, his conversation is as full of reason
and good sense, as was that of Don Quixote upon all other subjects but
that of knight-errantry. M. de Bàville was of my opinion. The children
of M. Mandagors conducted him without noise to one of his châteaux,
where he was confined, and the prophetess taken from him and sent
to prison.’” Vie du Maréchal Duc de Villars, tome I., pages 325 and
following.
[13] On the day of the ceremony of the first communion, celebrated
in the parish church of Saint Roch a few years ago (1780), after the
evening service they made according to custom the procession through
the streets. Scarcely were the children returned to the church,
and had resumed their seats, before a young girl fell ill and had
convulsions. This affection propagated itself with so much rapidity,
that in the space of half an hour fifty or sixty girls from twelve
to nineteen years of age were seized with the same convulsions; that
is, with a contraction of the throat, an inflation of the stomach,
suffocation, hiccups and spasms more or less considerable. These
accidents reappeared in some instances in the course of the week; but
the following Sunday, being assembled with the dames of Sainte Anne,
whose business it is to teach the young ladies, twelve of them were
seized with the same convulsions, and more would have followed, if
they had not had the precaution to send away each child upon the spot
to her relations. The whole were obliged to be divided into several
schools. By thus separating the children, and not keeping them together
but in small numbers, three weeks sufficed to dissipate entirely this
epidemical convulsive affection. See for other instances of the same
kind the Natural History of Convulsions by M. Hecquet.
[14] M. Deslon had already said in 1780. “Granting for a moment that M.
Mesmer possesses no other secret than that of employing the imagination
in the extensive production of the most salutary effects, will it not
still be true, that his invention is an extremely valuable one? For in
reality, if the physic of the imagination be more salutary than the
other kinds of medicine, what good reason can be alledged, why the
physic of the imagination should not be brought into general use?”
Observations on the Animal Magnetism, pages 46 and 47.
[15] If it be objected to the commissioners that this decision
concludes respecting the magnetism in general, instead of relating
singly to the magnetism practised by M. Deslon, the commissioners
reply that the intention of the king was to have their opinion upon
the animal magnetism, and that in consequence they have not exceeded
the bounds of their commission. Again they reply that M. Deslon has
appeared to them acquainted with what are called the principles of the
magnetism, and that he certainly possesses the means of producing the
effects and exciting the crises which are ascribed to it.
The principles of M. Deslon are the very same with those included
in the twenty seven propositions disseminated from the press by M.
Mesmer in 1779. If M. Mesmer now announces a more extensive theory,
it was not necessary for the commissioners to be acquainted with the
theory to decide upon the existence and utility of the magnetism, it
was sufficient to estimate the effects. It is by the effects that
the existence of a cause is established, it is by the effects also
that its utility must be demonstrated. The phenomena are learned from
observation long before we can arrive at the theory which connects and
explains them. The theory of the loadstone does not yet exist, and its
phenomena are ascertained by the experience of successive ages. The
theory of M. Mesmer is in this case indifferent and superfluous; the
methods employed, the effects produced, this is what it was necessary
to examine. Now it is easy to prove that the essential practice of the
magnetism is known to M. Deslon.
M. Deslon was for many years the pupil of M. Mesmer. Constantly during
that time he saw the process of the animal magnetism, and the means
employed in exciting and directing it. M. Deslon himself administered
the magnetism in the presence of M. Mesmer; separated from him he
operated the same effects. Being afterwards reconciled they united
their patients; the one and the other without distinction undertook the
management of them, and of consequence the methods were the same. The
method which is followed at this day by M. Deslon can be no other than
the method of M. Mesmer.
The effects are not less correspondent. There are crises equally
frequent, and accompanied by similar symptoms, at the house of M.
Deslon and at the house of M. Mesmer; the effects do not therefore
belong to the method of an individual, but to the practice of the
magnetism in general. The experiments of the commissioners demonstrate
that the effects obtained by M. Deslon are due to compression, to
imagination and to imitation. These are therefore the causes of the
magnetism in general. The observations of the commissioners have
convinced them that these convulsive crises and these violent means
cannot be useful in medicine any otherwise than as poisons, and they
have judged independent of all theory that wherever it shall be the
object to excite convulsions they may become habitual and pernicious,
they may be epidemically diffused, and even extend to future
generations.
The commissioners were of consequence obliged to conclude that not only
the measures in a particular mode of proceeding, but the measures of
the magnetism in general, might in the end produce the most pernicious
effects.
Transcriber’s Note
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Small caps have been converted to ALL CAPS.
Erroneously placed or missing punctuation has been silently corrected.
Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of the book.
The following typographical errors have been changed:
p. 16: “administred” changed to “administered” (have been and are
administered to the diseased)
p. 30: “seness” changed to “senses” (capable of being perceived by
the senses)
p. 33: “difrent” changed to “different” (may be observed in two
different ways)
p. 39: “account account” changed to “account” (giving an exact and
faithful account of their sensations)
p. 84: “hiccuphings” changed to “hiccuppings” (hiccuppings, qualms of
the stomach and purgings)
Footnote 12: “chàteaux” changed to “châteaux” (conducted him without
noise to one of his châteaux)
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REPORT OF DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, AND OTHER COMMISSIONERS, CHARGED BY THE KING OF FRANCE, WITH THE EXAMINATION OF THE ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AS NOW PRACTISED AT PARIS ***
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